


A Thousand Eyes Staring Back

by shirozora



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Alternate Reality, M/M, What-If, asian shepard, when a throwaway thought blows up into a multichaptered fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-06-07 14:09:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 50,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6808354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirozora/pseuds/shirozora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His problems start at Horizon, aka that time Kaidan Alenko was having a really bad day and his former CO was supposed to be dead. Several poor decisions later, he wakes up on the Normandy enroute to Haestrom to find help stopping the Collectors. Kaidan isn’t changing his opinion of Cerberus anytime soon but he’ll do whatever it takes to protect the human colonies - and Shepard.</p><p>The brass is going to have a field day. And these poor decisions aren’t going to stop.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beyond Horizon

**Author's Note:**

> [This is Shepard](https://66.media.tumblr.com/2da34b9e3b17bea6dfe2440ed858151e/tumblr_o66q5gMHo01s5ry30o1_r1_540.png) because I am extremely allergic to brickhead white default Shepard and I hate how hard it is creating a male Asian Shepard. 
> 
>  
> 
> I spent three months on this fic. I can't believe myself.
> 
> What happened was I gave myself a mental exercise - "what would happen if Kaidan got more involved in the events of ME2?" - _and it wouldn't leave me alone_. Argued with myself for several days and then gave up and started writing to see how far I'd go with it. I went all the way to the end. Unbelievable.
> 
> I spent an entire month writing this fic while listening to [this Hamilton/Pacific Rim mashup](https://soundcloud.com/sheehammer/yorktown-rim). I successfully conditioned myself to write/think about Mass Effect whenever I listen to it.

_“But I still know where my loyalties lie.”_

Anger - betrayal; _how could you_ \- is how Kaidan can turn his back on his former commander and walk away. It’s a near thing; Shepard looked _hopeful_ while offering him a place on the new Normandy and with Garrus standing there, another reminder of the “old times”, Kaidan’s resolve weakened.

But he’s Alliance. Always will be. He wants to believe Shepard is doing this for the right reasons but he never forgot Cerberus’s cells, their horrendous experiments, Admiral Kohaku’s murder. They’re terrorists, and now he can confirm the rumors that Commander Shepard, formerly of the Alliance, is working with them.

How could he? How _dare_ he-

Out of sight of Shepard, Garrus, and the scarred salarian, Kaidan sags against a stack of crates, digging fingertips into his temples, and tries to compose himself. He shouldn’t let his emotions get the better of him like they did in the months after Shepard’s death, but it’s so damn hard because Shepard was just standing right in front of him, alive and well.

And he’s been alive and well for weeks, traveling through the Terminus on a mission to stop these Collectors. Why did he never contact Kaidan? Why did Kaidan have to find out through rumors and an anonymous tip about Cerberus? That hurts almost as much as knowing who Shepard is working with now.

But this isn’t about him meeting a ghost. He can’t let his feelings about Shepard’s new allegiance get in the way of what transpired at this colony because Shepard’s also right; while the Alliance only sent him and GARDIAN towers to Horizon, Shepard came with a team and a single objective - save the colony from the Collectors. The brass will probably censor that part of his report and send him elsewhere, far from the Terminus Systems and Shepard, because this is out of their hands, out of their space and jurisdiction, and they can’t risk antagonizing the Terminus’s various factions.

But Kaidan knows the truth now. He can’t sit idly by while these Collectors continue striking human colonies and abducting people.

He fiddles with his earpiece and omni-tool until he finds the old frequency, the one the old Normandy’s crew used when their enemy was a rogue Spectre and the galaxy made sense. It’s a long shot and if the message doesn’t go through, he’ll let it go and walk away for good. That’s what he tells himself while opening the channel.

“Shepard.” He pinches his nose bridge and takes a deep breath. “If you want to talk, I’ll be at the Citadel. If I'm not, ask Anderson.”

He waits a second, two seconds, three, and then raises his hand to switch frequencies and call for pickup. He freezes at the shaky exhale at the other end of the line and the very quiet, _“I’ll keep that in mind.”_

* * *

“It’s been three weeks and they haven’t given me another assignment. All they’ll say is that I’m not to leave the CItadel. Did they tell you anything?”

“They did.” Councilor Anderson sits back in his chair and fixes Kaidan with a look. “Did you even proofread your report?”

“I wasn’t hiding anything,” he retorts. Then, “Sir.”

“I’m a councilor now. No need to keep calling me that.” Anderson sighs and tosses a datapad onto his desk. “You condemned the brass for not proactively protecting our colonies out in the Terminus, which you know they can’t do without provoking a costly time-consuming war.”

“So we should let the Collectors abduct them because they set up in the wrong system?” When Anderson continues staring, he adds, “The Collector threat is real. _I was there._ If Shepard didn’t show up-”

“I believe you. Let’s talk about Shepard,” Anderson says. “You wrote in your report that you can confirm he’s working for Cerberus but the Collectors are the bigger threat and that should take priority. You deflected your mission’s objective. How do you think that looks to them?”

Kaidan drags a hand through his hair while pacing in front of the councilor. He knew he was risking his superiors’ ire but he just couldn’t keep his opinion to himself. He’ll admit to being more than concerned about the rumors of a ghost resurfacing under the Cerberus banner, but after barely escaping the Collectors’ grasp? Kaidan couldn’t make himself prioritize Shepard’s ties to the terrorist organization.

Cerberus was on Horizon to stop the Collectors. What did the Alliance do?

“We lost smart, hardworking men and women to Cerberus,” Anderson says, interrupting his traitorous thoughts. “Resigned from the Alliance to join them. I don’t like the idea of you doing the same.”

“I never would,” Kaidan says, sitting heavily in a chair across from Anderson. “I came back with more questions than answers and no one’s giving me anything. What am I supposed to do? Sit around wasting my time at Dark Star Lounge or the Arena until they decide if I’m more loyal to them or to Shepard?”

Anderson considers his outburst and then leans forward. His expression reminds Kaidan of a moment two years ago, when his former captain told Shepard to take the Normandy and run for Ilos. “Answer those questions yourself.”

“I’m not turning my back on the Alliance.”

“That’s not what I said. You won’t be working with Cerberus….”

* * *

_“... you’ll be working with_ him _.”_

Kaidan thunks his forehead against the counter and gets a reproachful stare from the turian bartender for it. The surface is pleasantly cool against his hot face and soothes the mild throbbing behind his right eye, but it’s also sticky and stinking of stale ale. He reluctantly pries his face off of it.

“Another?” the bartender asks, already pulling out a vial of liquor.

“Please.”

He slams back his drink and breathes deeply while it burns down his throat. The soft orange bars of light ringing Dark Star Lounge’s ceiling sway and he drops his gaze to the empty glass.

Anderson’s words run circles in his head. _“Vakarian was with him. You know him better than I do; you really think he’s there for Cerberus?”_

No, Garrus is there for Shepard. Kaidan wishes he was in the same position. What he said on Horizon wasn’t platitudes but the truth - he would’ve followed Shepard into the void if he could, or at least remained on the Normandy while it fell apart. That was the kind of loyalty the commander inspired, the kind that convinced the brass to ground Kaidan indefinitely.

And Kaidan threw it all back in Shepard’s face.

He pushes his empty glass at the bartender as the turian made his rounds.

“Another?” the bartender asks, exasperated.

“Have anything stronger?”

“Ryncol?” the bartender suggests, catching the attention of nearby patrons.

Miserable as he feels, Kaidan isn’t ready to obliterate the rest of his day. “Maybe not that strong.”

Chuckling, the bartender pulls something out from under the counter. “How about some batarian ale?”

Kaidan ends up ordering two more rounds. By now, a few people have gathered at his end of the bar, watching surreptitiously and whispering to each other. He imagines they’re wondering why a ranking Alliance officer is drinking himself into oblivion. The bartender lingers, waiting to pour him another, and isn’t that pathetic?

Instead, Kaidan pulls up his omni-tool. He blinks blearily while tapping through the settings.

“Uh, buddy,” the bartender says. “You sure you want to do that?”

Kaidan ignores him and manages to find the old frequency despite his blurry vision and fuzzy head. Shepard is on the other side of the galaxy but he needs to say something, anything, about his old commander screwing with his current life.

“Shepard,” he mutters. He drops his voice another decibel when asari and turian heads cock in his direction. “They grounded me. Higher ups won’t give me an assignment or let me off the Citadel, and it’s all because of you. You’re out there somewhere working with a terrorist group and they think I’ll follow you instead of staying here.”

He huffs a laugh and licks liquor off his lip. “They’re not wrong. I - I would’ve followed you anywhere, but Cerberus? How does Garrus live with it? He was there. He saw what they did. How does he rationalize it? How does a turian care more about human colonies and human lives than the Alliance? Just think about it.”

He sighs, pressing fingertips to his forehead, and closes his eyes. It takes longer than he likes to open them to look at the omni-tool’s display.

“Anderson’s right. Cerberus or no Cerberus. Even if it’s been two years. Thought I moved on but you, you just drag me right back in. Fuck you, Shepard.” A wet sigh. “Miss you, too. Miss the Normandy. Joker. Ash. Everyone. Everything. Even the Mako and your nonexistent driving skills.”

“.... okay, I think that’s enough,” the bartender says, tapping on Kaidan’s omni-tool.

Kaidan glares at the turian and then at the display. He shuts his eyes while kneading his right temple and-

* * *

He wakes to a pounding headache and a crawling sensation up his spine. A synthetic voice might have said his name but all he can focus on is the intense pressure under his skull, the brightness pressing against his shut eyes, and the soft cushioned surface underneath him. There’s no hard sticky counter or sweet stench of spilled cocktails, no thudding beat of the lounge’s music to wake to. There’s the low hum of systems working in tandem and the creaking of weight settling into a chair.

“... at thirty percent.”

The brightness dims, a blessed relief, and he relaxes. Just a little.

“Miranda requests your presence in her office.”

“Tell her I’ll come by later.”

“Very well, Shepard.”

_Shepard?_

He pries his eyes open. He’s curled up in a bed, staring at a stack of datapads and a sound system on a bedside table. A quick glance at the ceiling shows him a thick glass panel and a ship’s kinetic barrier. And stars.

Kaidan isn’t on the Citadel. His superiors are going to have a field day.

“How much did you drink?”

He slowly rolls onto his back because he knows better than to encourage nausea, though staring at the swirling barrier isn’t doing him any favors. He looks to his right; Shepard sits in a lounge chair with a curious expression.

“What happened?” His mouth tastes like death, if that’s an appropriate comparison to make around a ghost.

“Glad you asked.” Shepard leans forward, elbows on his knees. Scars crawl up his face, the cracks in his golden skin flashing like cybernetics. His gray-blue eyes don’t leave Kaidan’s. “Decided to swing by the Citadel after visiting Tuchanka. I picked something up on the old frequency while docking. Remember that?”

Kaidan doesn’t. He remembers asking the bartender for more batarian ale.

His silence answers Shepard’s question and the commander sits back with a low laugh and a shake of his head. “Never thought I’d see the day Kaidan Alenko drunk dials someone.”

“I didn’t.”

“The bartender remembers,” Shepard says dryly. “Tried to stop you but decided it was for the best when I showed up after you passed out.”

“... shit.” He covers his face. “They’re dragging me back to Earth for this.”

“If they ever find out.”

He peers through his fingers at the ship’s - the _Normandy’s_ \- kinetic barrier and the stars. “Did you kidnap me?”

“With help from Anderson and the bartender,” Shepard says. “Almost didn’t make it past C-Sec but we managed.”

He sits up at Anderson’s name and regrets it. The headache explodes behind his eyes and he doubles over, swearing and shaking and trying to breathe. He flinches at the loud rustling on his right and then goes still at the hand on his back.

“Migraine?” Shepard asks quietly.

“Or a really bad hangover,” he grits out. He swallows hard against the bile rising in the back of his throat and focuses on breathing, on the hand rubbing circles into his tense back. “Maybe drinking was a bad idea.”

Shepard huffs at that. “I’d say you’re in no condition to return to the Citadel just yet. Looks like you’re stuck with us.”

“Fantastic,” Kaidan mumbles, sarcastic and utterly sincere.

“Want me to call Chakwas up? She’ll want to see you anyway.”

Shepard is enough interaction for one day. “Maybe later.”

“All right. I’ll let you rest.” The bed shifts and Kaidan cracks an eye open to see Shepard walking up the steps past the - is that a fish tank?

Shepard notices and taps lightly on the glass, startling the fish on the other side. “Hate to say it but Cerberus knows how to spoil their people. Ask Joker about the leather seats. Or don’t. Up to you.” He takes another step, then hesitates and turns back to Kaidan. “You’ll be all right?”

“I can take care of myself, Commander,” Kaidan says. “I’ll be fine.”

He wonders at Shepard’s expression, at his fondness and regret, long after the commander leaves.


	2. SR-2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got too impatient with sticking to a strict weekly posting schedule.
> 
> Many thanks to everyone who read and responded with comments and/or kudos so far.

Kaidan’s first post-hangover headache-less twenty-four hours on the new Normandy goes like this:

All chatter in the mess on the third deck ceases when Kaidan steps into view, crewmen and Garrus staring at him with various utensils halfway to their mouths. Then someone says, “Why is Shepard’s booty call still here-”

The woman sitting next to him smacks him upside the head while Garrus spits out whatever he’s eating. “Kenneth!”

Garrus is still smarting over their encounter on Horizon and chooses to finish eating in the main battery room. Kaidan tries not to take it personally. He picks at his food for the next thirty minutes while staring at the doctor in the medical bay, wondering why she of all people signed on with Cerberus.

He doesn’t notice the small hooded woman watching him from a corner of the deck.

Miranda Lawson, Shepard’s second-in-command and the ranking Cerberus officer on the ship, calls him to her office for a “chat”. It turns into an hour-long interrogation that only end when Shepard comes looking for him.

“Commander,” she says sweetly like she wasn’t casually threatening Kaidan with her biotics and bullets a second ago. “We were just discussing Staff Commander Alenko’s service record.”

“I forwarded you his dossier four hours ago,” Shepard says, which gets Kaidan’s attention. Since when did he have one and who sent it to Shepard?

“Admiral Hackett,” the commander later says on the elevator down to the fourth deck. “He’s the only other person who knows exactly where you are right now.”

Kaidan isn’t surprised. Admiral Hackett always thought highly of Shepard and had reportedly stonewalled requests to bring the commander in for questioning about his two-year absence and current association with Cerberus. Of course he’d know and support Shepard “abducting” an Alliance officer from his post for the mission.

On the fourth deck, Kaidan is introduced to the mercenary Zaeed Massani, who launches into a well-tread tale about a dinged assault rifle named Jessie, and a tank-bred blue-eyed krogan called Grunt.

“You fought with Shepard against Saren and his pale horde?” Grunt asks, looking him from head to toe with those sharp pale eyes.

“Yes,” Kaidan says faintly because Virmire is never a good memory. Going by the tight smile on Shepard’s face, the commander still feels the same.

“Good.”

Right outside the port cargo hold, Shepard says, “Just so you know, Kasumi Goto’s been shadowing you since we left Miranda’s office.”

He immediately looks over his shoulder but sees no one. He does hear a very quiet, “ _Damn it._ ”

Kaidan had seen more than his fair share of Cerberus’s handiwork while chasing Saren across the galaxy but he never met someone who lived it. He stares at Jack’s many tattoos and eventually drags his eyes back up to see her smirking at him.

“Like what you see, pretty boy?” she drawls, expression predatory.

“Jack,” Shepard says mildly.

She holds her hands up. “He’s all yours. Not my type, anyway.”

The other Cerberus officer, Jacob Taylor, is in the armory behind the CIC on the second deck. His ramrod posture and salute gives away his service history but Kaidan doesn’t know what to make of the man’s reproachful stare.

“Do they know about Horizon?” he asks while leaving the scarred salarian, Professor Mordin Solus, to his work in the labs.

Shepard hesitates. “They know how much the Alliance did to protect the colony-”

“Alliance didn’t know it was the Collectors until I reported it-”

“They also know you were there and I was… not in a good mood when I got back. That was before the Illusive Man told me he leaked intel about me and Cerberus to the Alliance.”

“ _What_?”

“He needed proof that the Collectors were singling me out. What better way than to lure one of my friends out to see if the Collectors go after him, too?”

He doesn’t know how to feel about Shepard’s bitter tone or still being called a friend. “What I said back there-”

“I know.” Shepard glances around the deck. “But the Collectors are the priority. You know me; I wouldn’t work with them if I had another choice but who else is protecting the colonies?”

“Yeah.” He wants to say more but Shepard is either dodging or thinks this is a conversation best held in private. He glances at the woman working at a terminal at the CIC and then at others at their stations, at their Cerberus uniforms with the Cerberus colors and logo, and decides to wait.

Shepard touches his elbow and nods to the bridge. “Come on; Joker wants to see you.”

At the cockpit, Joker swivels around in his leather chair and salutes Kaidan. “Hey, Lieutenant! Or is it Commander now?”

“Alenko is fine,” Kaidan says. In a lower voice, he adds, “Ship doesn’t need two commanders.”

“Oh good, you answered my next question.” Joker sits back and gestures to the helm. “So, what do you think? Isn’t she great?”

“She’s impressive,” he replies. “They really improved on the original design, I’ll give them that much. But where did they get the blueprints?”

“It’s… probably best not to ask,” Joker says. “She’s just like my baby, but bigger, faster, and stronger. Basically, she’s perfect.”

“However,” and a blue hologram appears on a platform on the port side, “the Normandy still needs significant improvements in order to survive future encounters with the Collectors. The upgrades Garrus Vakarian wishes to make to the Javelin disruptor torpedo launchers will not be enough.”

“Oh come on, EDI,” Joker says. “That’s no way to sell her to the newest teammate. You are joining us, right?”

“If Mr. Alenko has suggestions for upgrading the ship, I am more than happy to forward the information to Professor Solus.”

Kaidan blinks at the hologram. “Cerberus installed an AI on this ship? And you’re okay with it?”

“No, we’re still arguing over every single thing I do. And I mean _every. Single. Thing_.”

“His responses to my queries and critiques are most interesting,” the AI remarks and Shepard coughs to hide his laughter.

“See what I put up with?”

On the way back to Shepard’s cabin, the commander says, “Cerberus shackled EDI so if you’re worried about her taking over the ship like in that twentieth century vid-”

“My primary function is to maintain the electronic and cyberwarfare suites during combat.” The hologram appears on a small platform between them. “I do not interfere with the day-to-day maintenance of this ship. Per Shepard’s instructions, I must also inform you that I monitor extranet activities and listening devices, and send reports to the Illusive Man at regular intervals.”

The Illusive Man appears to be either Shepard’s sponsor or Cerberus’s head, as Lawson implied multiple times. “Will this Illusive Man have a problem with me being here?”

Shepard shrugs and steps out of the elevator. “It’s my ship and my mission. He knows better than to interfere if he wants results.” He opens the cabin door and then pauses. “But everyone I recruited so far came from the dossiers he sent me. Can’t wait to see how he’ll react to you.”

Inside, Kaidan watches the fish tank’s residents while Shepard checks his private terminal, wondering which Cerberus engineer thought to add it to the captain’s cabin. He looks over his shoulder at Shepard; questions and apologies build on the tip of his tongue but he doesn’t know where to start.

“Are you going to fill me in on the mission?” he finally asks. Start with the basics. The rest will come later. “Besides stopping the Collectors from kidnapping more humans, that is.”

Shepard looks up, face and scars aglow from the console’s display. “Guess I should. The Illusive Man found patterns suggesting the Collectors are working for the Reapers. Now he has proof they’re also after me. What do you know about the Omega-4 relay in the Sahrabarik-”

The intercom crackles. _“Commander. Approaching the next relay to the Dholen System in thirty minutes.”_

“The Far Rim? That’s close to geth space.”

“Tali’s there,” Shepard replies, “and I need her help. Garrus volunteered and since you’re here, you might as well join.” The commander smiles wryly. “See? Just like old times.”

* * *

“Just like old times,” Garrus echoes Shepard several hours later, ducking into cover to pop the thermal clip of his assault rifle.

“No kidding,” Kaidan agrees while aiming his pistol at a geth hiding behind a stack of crates. As soon as the synthetic steps out to fire, he staggers it with an overload before killing it with a well-aimed shot. More geth pour out into the courtyard, unhindered by the planet’s sun.

“Crap. Incoming,” the turian says. “Shepard-”

Kaidan swallows back a groan when Shepard glows biotic blue and rockets across the courtyard in the blink of an eye, landing in the shade with a violent shockwave. The nearest geth break apart from the force but the heavier synthetics only stumble back.They turn their weapons on Shepard and one drops abruptly from a shotgun blast to the chestpiece. The others shy away from Garrus’s gunfire, giving Shepard a breather.

“Hasn’t changed a bit. Unbelievable,” Kaidan mutters. He taps Garrus’s shoulder. “Cover me.”

He runs down a ramp and sprints through direct sunlight. His shields sizzle until he finds shade in a stone pillar; while they recharge, he throws a biotic field at the geth swarming Shepard. The commander whirls around when it hits a geth hunter and crushes it against the side of the quarian ruins. Shepard grins and salutes Kaidan before wrapping himself in a field and barreling into another geth, tossing it into the air. A sniper shot destroys it before it lands.

“What did I tell you?” Shepard says afterwards. He slaps Kaidan’s shoulders before hailing Garrus, who hastily skirts around sunlight to reach them.

“I didn’t come here just to chase you all over the field again,” Kaidan says while they move into the ruins of the old quarian colony.

“How do you think I feel?” Garrus grumbles.

“But that’s what makes it so fun,” Shepard replies, turns a corner, and collides with a pair of unsuspecting geth.

After a brief firefight that ends with Shepard discharging his biotic barrier on an overloading geth, Garrus treads on a working radio next to a dead quarian. The quarian marine on the other end, Kal’Reegar, fills them in on the situation though he’s unable to explain exactly what Tali’s doing on Haestrom.

“But she’s still alive?” Shepard asks tersely.

_“The observatory’s heavily fortified and I’m making sure they don’t get the time to break in. But we can’t keep them distracted for - watch out, geth dropship incoming!”_

They eventually blast their way into a room full of dead quarians and geth, logs from the quarian science team, and a very familiar person trying to hail a friendly face through the comms. Shepard responds and tells Tali why he’s on Haestrom while Garrus recovers medi-gel packets and thermal clips and Kaidan fails to hack the sealed door next to the quarians’ weapons locker.

 _“... since Freedom’s Progress,”_ Tali says. _“I can open the door from my end. Please, if you find Kal’Reegar and the others, save them. I won’t let this mission go to waste just for some data.”_

“I’ll do my best,” Shepard says and closes the link.

“Freedom’s Progress? The colony?” Kaidan remembers the ANN report. “How does she know about it?”

“A quarian was on Pilgrimage there,” Shepard says while taking some thermal clips from Garrus. “They came to bring him back. He survived the attack and gave us footage to prove it was the Collectors. I’ll explain more later.”

They find Kal’Reegar pinned down behind a stone ledge in a courtyard, clutching a missile launcher and waiting for a lull in the gunfire to launch missiles at the geth colossus trying to break through the observatory’s sealed doors. He’s the only marine left and refuses to stand down.

“I’ll keep the colossus distracted,” he insists when Shepard tells him to. “Get Tali’Zorah and leave. She’s the only one that matters.”

“I need you alive,” Shepard replies firmly. “So does Tali. Stay here and watch our backs, but don’t do anything stupid. For her sake.”

Kal’Reegar reluctantly acquiesces and suggests various tactics for destroying the self-repairing colossus. Shepard peers over the ledge and then ducks to avoid its pulse cannon. The blast crashes into the wall behind them and rains debris on their heads.

“Left or middle?” Shepard asks, checking his pistol’s incendiary rounds.

Garrus snipes a geth on a platform overlooking the yard and says, “Left. It’ll protect us from the colossus and minimize sun exposure.”

“I’m with Garrus,” Kaidan says.

“Okay,” Shepard says and a blue corona forms around him. “See you there.”

“ _Shepard-_ ”

Garrus curses and sprints down the ramp to pick off the geth swarming Shepard’s location across the courtyard. Kaidan and Kal’Reegar stare at the commander unloading his pistol on the startled colossus before taking out his shotgun and charging it again when it tries to nail him with its pulse cannon.

“ _This_ is Tali’Zorah’s former captain?” the quarian marine asks.

Kaidan gestures for Kal’Reegar’s missile launcher. He throws a field at geth snipers trying to hit Shepard and Garrus from the elevated walkway and hoists the launcher onto his shoulder.

“You might want to duck, Commander,” he mutters into the comm link, takes aim, and pulls the trigger.

* * *

“Feels like the old crew’s come back together,” Chakwas muses, watching Shepard give Tali a tour of the new Normandy. “Not that it’ll be the same but having you, Tali, and Garrus around certainly helps the illusion.”

Kaidan pulls on his shirt, careful not to aggravate his shoulder. It’s a small price to pay for helping destroy the geth colossus but he could’ve done without Kal’Reegar’s lecture about missile launchers afterwards. “But this is a Cerberus vessel with a Cerberus crew. Why did you join?”

“I didn’t ‘join’ Cerberus, but you deserve an answer,” she replies. “Simply put, I miss serving on a ship. I spent too many years on the field to be satisfied with my post on Mars.” She looks out the window again at Joker sitting in the mess, trading friendly barbs with the crew. “Once Joker told me what Cerberus was up to, I followed him here. Having the commander back, you, Garrus, Tali, this ship, it feels… stable. Like home.”

He won’t say it but she’s right. He may have spent two years on his own, carving out a respectable career with the Alliance, but a part of him always yearned for the old days, for Shepard, the Normandy, and the others. 

“As I understand it,” Chakwas says while sitting at her workstation, “you had some choice words for Shepard about Cerberus.”

He winces. “Did he tell you?”

“Garrus did. Wondered why they were both in such a terrible mood and asked. You have to understand, Alenko - not everyone here joined Cerberus _for_ Cerberus. Some of us just want to protect the colonies. Some of us are here for Shepard. I imagine that’s why you haven’t asked to return to the Citadel or an Alliance outpost.”

His breath hitches. In the frenetic and somewhat painful aftermath of Haestrom, he forgot to ask Shepard. Now the thought fills him with dread even though it’s the responsible thing to do. 

But what will the brass do about the Collectors? 

“Are you going to join us, Alenko?”

Kaidan hesitates. He shouldn’t be on a Cerberus vessel with Cerberus officers and crew, but he sees Chakwas and Joker, Garrus and now Tali, and can’t think of anywhere else he should be.

Shepard and Tali are back in the mess, talking to Joker and the crewmen. He watches them through the window and then Shepard looks at him. Kaidan doesn’t look elsewhere or blink until they leave and then he exhales slowly, raking a hand through his hair and wishing his heart could stop pounding.

“I’ll stay.”

* * *

Tali hates Cerberus more than Kaidan does though her reasons go beyond their horrific experiments and their origins as Alliance black ops. Apparently Cerberus once attacked the Migrant Fleet for harboring a young human biotic.

“So what’s your excuse?” she asks him in the mess.

He shrugs. “Drank too much and got on the old frequency.” He hopes she never finds security footage of Shepard and the turian bartender carrying him onto the Normandy. “You?”

She also shrugs. “It’s Shepard. After everything we’ve been through, how can I say no when he asks?” She leans forward, elbows on the table. “You saw what they did.”

“Yeah.”

She hums thoughtfully. “I really thought he was trying to destroy them from the inside. I would, you know. Build myself a bomb, get access to their secret headquarters, and plant it wherever this Illusive Man is hiding.”

Nearby crewmen glance at her.

“I like you already,” Jack declares while walking by with a tray of food. She glares at the others, daring them to speak.

“You know the saying ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’?” Kaidan asks.

“The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy,” Tali replies pointedly. “But I get it. They want the same thing and the Illusive Man knows better than to get in Shepard’s way. If those are the rules, I can work with them.”

They look at Garrus when he sits down next to Tali. “You guys started without me?”

“Don’t worry, we were just fantasizing about blowing up Cerberus. You didn’t miss much,” she says. “Shepard says you were on Omega. Why would you even go there?”

“For the sights, of course,” Garrus says seriously. “Shady nightclubs, the slums, vorcha, gang wars, Aria T’Loak, Omega has it all. There was even a Collector-designed plague going around one of the slums. Killed anything that wasn't vorcha or human. You should’ve been there.”

“And get sick and die on _Omega_? No thanks.”

“I heard you managed to get three merc gangs working together to take you down,” Kaidan says. “What did you do?”

“If you must know,” Garrus says, subconsciously puffing up with pride, "I went there to make a difference. Figured if I could save a few lives, make enough of a difference, then….”

They slowly make their way to Kaidan’s two years with the Alliance, skipping the details on his classified assignments, before moving on to Tali’s return to the Flotilla with her copy of the geth data cache. 

While Tali explains the Flotilla’s interest in the Dholen System’s rapidly maturing star, Kaidan catches Garrus’s eye and tilts his head ever so slightly. _We good?_

Garrus nods before launching into a story involving his handpicked squad. Kaidan relaxes but his attention slides away at the prickling sensation along his spine. Is it that shadowy thief? He glances discretely over his shoulder and instead sees Shepard hanging back, watching them.

He nods to the younger man, an invitation to join, but Shepard shakes his head and walks away.


	3. Nos Astra

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, back to your regularly scheduled Tuesday update.

“Welcome to Nos Astra, Commander Shepard,” the asari concierge says while the airlock closes behind Tali. “Your docking and administrative fees have been paid for courtesy of Liara T’Soni. You may find her at her office near the trading floor….”

Kaidan stares at the skyline’s graceful asari architecture while the concierge describes the city’s main attractions. He turns back around when the concierge warns Shepard against signing anything.

“It’s the only way to stay competitive in the Terminus Systems,” she explains. “I highly recommend finding a lawyer if you decide to accept a contract. Once you sign it, you are legally bound to follow it to the letter. As for what you call ‘slavery’....”

She also gives Tali a pointedly suspicious look when they leave the docking area.

“Few quarians go to Illium,” Tali remarks, studying the kiosks on the trading floor. “The Migrant Fleet isn’t allowed near Tasale. They think we’ll hack into the terminals, steal their credits, and disrupt trading, among other things.”

“Your people should be the least of anyone’s worries,” Kaidan says. “Indentured servitude? Really?”

“Reminds me of Noveria, minus the snow and rachni,” Shepard says and nearly collides with an asari asking his name.

Liara’s office overlooks the trading floor, a prime location for one of Illium’s best information brokers. And apparently one of the most dangerous, judging by the casual veiled threat she’s making to a client over vid comm when they enter her office. Shepard raises an eyebrow when she looks over her shoulder.

“Shepard,” she breathes and quickly closes the comm over the man’s protestations. “Nyxeris, hold my calls.”

She embraces each of them before gesturing to the seats in front of her desk. She settles behind it, glancing briefly at her terminal before minimizing the display. “It’s so good to see you. I assume Garrus is also here.”

“He’s back on the Normandy, upgrading her main guns,” Shepard says. “You can come see for yourself. Or,” and he adopts that hopeful tone that nearly won Kaidan over on Horizon, “you can join us.”

Liara smiles regretfully. “I wish I could, Shepard, but I have… things to do here. Business to take care of. You remember the Shadow Broker?”

“I do,” Tali says promptly.

“You’re not in trouble, are you?” Kaidan asks. “Is he after you?”

“On the contrary,” and Liara’s smile turns fierce. “I’m after him. I’m so close to finding his base of operations. If I leave now, my work will go to waste. I can’t let that happen, I’m sorry.”

There’s nothing of the archaeologist Kaidan remembers working with two years ago. She claims information brokering is like working at the dig sites and Prothean ruins, but he’s not convinced; the Liara he knew was not this ruthless and calculating, not this single-minded in her goal of dismantling the Shadow Broker’s network. Shepard seems to agree, prodding her to explain her grudge.

“I can’t say,” she says. “I don’t want to drag you into this. But perhaps you can help me find information on his operatives here.”

“We can look into it,” Shepard says. “And since you deal in information, maybe you can help us.”

“Anything, Shepard. You just need to ask.”

“I’m looking for an asari justicar and a drell assassin. Know anything about them?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.”

* * *

He doesn’t know how long he’s been standing at a table in the armory, staring at the mods and his dismantled firearms. Taylor is with Shepard and Massani, investigating a justicar’s presence outside of asari space, so he has the armory to himself. That might be for the best.

Tali is down in engineering; she wasn’t comfortable with people staring suspiciously at her and elected to return to the ship. It’s a better reason than why Kaidan isn’t helping break apart the Eclipse base. 

“You’re kidding,” Kaidan had said in the docking area. So what if he kept flinching whenever a passerby bumped into his shoulder? That’s what medi-gel was for.

“I need you ready to go when we hit the Dantius Towers,” Shepard replied, squeezing his other shoulder like it’s supposed to reassure him. “You heard Seryna. We have to be ready for anything.”

“That’s weird,” Tali said back on the ship. “I got a suit puncture once and he didn’t ship me back until after we cleared that gang holdout on Sharjila. It’s only your shoulder and it’s not like you broke it.”

Or there’s still a lingering distrust over what happened on Horizon, despite what Shepard said. Words like Kaidan’s are hard to forgive or forget; he knows he wouldn’t. But he then remembers sitting in the mess with Garrus and Tali, catching up on the two years apart, and Shepard hanging back, refusing to join.

Maybe two long years apart and a dangerous sponsor are too much to overcome-

_“Ah, Lieut - I mean, Alenko? Liara just called? She wants to meet you at her office, like, now.”_

Liara? Kaidan stacks the mods and reassembles his pistols. “Does she want me to come alone?”

The comm crackles a few seconds later with Joker’s bemused voice. _“Yep. Wonder what she wants.”_

Equally curious, Kaidan wastes no time leaving the Normandy and passing the trading kiosks to the stairs leading up to Liara’s office. He nods to her assistant, and Nyxeris lets him in.

Liara is talking to Anderson on vid comm. She turns when he enters the room. “I’ll leave you two alone.”

Once the door shuts behind her, he gives Anderson his full attention. “Councilor. How did you know I was here?”

_“Liara’s been keeping me in the loop. Thought I’d talk to you myself, get your opinion on what’s happening out there. What’s the situation with Shepard and Cerberus?”_

“It’s… well, it’s still Shepard’s show,” Kaidan says. “Cerberus gave him a ship and crew but they’re letting him handle the mission however he sees fit. But what about you? Shepard said you had a hand in getting me off the Citadel.”

 _“Udina won’t let it go but the Alliance has given up for now. C-Sec isn’t saying anything; they claim that parts of the system must’ve been down for maintenance when we hauled you out.”_ Anderson chuckles and shakes his head. _“I imagine you don’t remember much of it.”_

“Besides drinking too much batarian ale and waking up in Shepard’s cabin with the Normandy halfway to the Far Rim.” He realizes too late how that sounds and his face reddens. He presses on anyway. “Why did you do it?”

_“I did it because you were right. The Alliance, the Council, they can’t keep pretending this isn’t a serious problem. ‘Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice….’ You know how it goes. The Council thinks these are random attacks by angry batarians and pirate bands but we know better. So do Shepard and Cerberus but I don’t like the idea of Cerberus leading the charge.”_

“So I’m… what? The Alliance rep?” Kaidan says. “Proof that they care just enough to send one person out to help Shepard stop the Collectors?”

 _“You’re more than that and you know it. If the Alliance takes action now, if the Council changes their mind, can you imagine the turmoil? That’s the last thing we need right now. And I don’t trust a terrorist organization to watch Shepard’s back.”_ Background noise distracts Anderson and he leans forward. _“I have to go. Take care of him, Alenko.”_

“Yes, sir,” Kaidan says and Anderson ends the call.

* * *

“You told him where I was?” Kaidan asks when Liara sits down at her desk.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

She taps a finger on her desk. “I’ve been tracking Shepard’s movements ever since he was spotted on Omega. I know who’s on his team and why, but you’re the outlier.”

“And Garrus and Tali aren’t?” he asks. “What makes me so special?”

She glances at her terminal and stack of datapads. “I’ve been… keeping tabs on the old team. Well, Garrus got away for a while but I always had my suspicions about Archangel. You were doing well in the Alliance. Some of your superiors were starting to talk about Spectre training.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I don’t believe you.”

Her smile is tempered with sympathy. “You’re a capable officer and biotic, Kaidan. Your career was on the upswing, and you didn’t have anything to lose or prove. That’s probably one of the reasons why the Illusive Man never considered you when Shepard started putting his team together.”

“That and I’m never working for Cerberus,” he says, which must sound amusing considering the Normandy is currently a Cerberus vessel.

“I know. You’re here for Shepard and to stop another Horizon from happening.” She keeps looking at something on her desk. “I wish I could join but I can’t. The Shadow Broker did some unforgivable things and I intend to make him pay.”

“What did he do?”

“He tried to sell Shepard’s body to the Collectors,” Liara says and coldness sweeps into her voice. “I hired a drell to help me retrieve it; Feron turned out to be a Broker agent but when he learned the nature of the deal, he helped me take Shepard’s body to Cerberus.”

He must be hearing things. “You gave Shepard to _Cerberus_?”

“I did,” she says. “He was dead and I couldn’t - I just couldn’t let him go or let the Collectors have him. Cerberus was not my first choice but they were determined to bring him back. So, I took a chance.”

“On Cerberus? You know what they did. You _saw_ \- do you have any idea-” He abruptly stands and strides to the windows overlooking Nos Astra’s trading floor. He clenches his hands tightly and tries to breathe. Years of training keep his temper leashed but his hands still glow.

Liara joins him, staring at the graceful cityscape pensively. “I spent two years agonizing over my decision. Did I do the right thing? Did I desecrate the body and memory of one of my dearest friends for the smallest chance that Cerberus could bring him back? Then reports started pouring in, talking about a dead Spectre on Omega purging slums of vorcha and mercenary gangs. To see him walk into my office….”

He can breathe now. “Did you tell him?” he asks hoarsely.

She doesn’t speak for a long moment. “Not yet. But I should. I will, when he comes back.” Then, dryly, “I’ve been tracking reports of activity at a known Eclipse base near Justicar Samara’s last known location. I can’t imagine what he’s doing to them.”

“Sarcasm from Liara T’Soni? DId the world end while I wasn’t looking?” Kaidan says. Unlike two years ago, she accepts his teasing with a soft laugh and then gestures to her desk.

“There’s another reason why I asked to see you. The information you found for me? It confirmed my suspicions about one of the Shadow Broker’s agents, the Observer. If you hack into terminals on the trading floor with my program, I can use the information to uncover the Observer’s true identity. Can you help me?”

“Of course.”

Nearly forty minutes pass before he finds and hacks into the last terminal, stubbornly ignoring the look Eternity’s bartender gives him. He uploads the text fragment Liara’s program extracted and reviews the evidence. Frowning, he calls Liara and says, “Something’s not right. All of your suspects are male but the Observer is female.”

A pause. Then, “Excuse me, Kaidan. Nyxeris, can you come in here please?”

* * *

Thane Krios is the last of Shepard’s recruits. A drell, he is disarmingly polite and utterly deadly. Shepard considers his skills and talents an asset to the team; Kaidan shares Taylor’s opinion about assassins but these are strange times and Krios said he wanted to spend his last months atoning for his past life. What better way than to stop the Collectors?

After EDI directs Krios to the Life Support room, Joker taps into the intercom to tell Shepard that the Illusive Man wants to talk to him. Taylor excuses himself but Shepard stops Kaidan from leaving. 

“He knows about you but he should see you, too,” Shepard says while the conference table retracts to the floor. There’s a certain glee in his voice and Kaidan seriously considers politely declining.

Instead, he watches Shepard step into the interface generated by the ship’s QEC. He hesitates, then follows the commander and is met with a truly impressive setting - a dark room set against a brilliant star. A gray-haired man with cybernetic blue eyes paces in front of them, a lit cigarette between his fingers. He stops as soon as he notices Kaidan.

“Staff Commander Kaidan Alenko,” he says amiably. “I’m glad to see that you’re well.”

“No thanks to you.”

“I apologize for what happened on Horizon but it had to be done. Hypotheses need to be tested if we want to come to the right conclusions, and mine were. But enough about Horizon. As long as you don’t interfere with Shepard’s mission, I have no objection to you being a part of it.”

“Wasn’t aware I needed permission,” Kaidan says derisively.

The Illusive Man ignores him. “Shepard, there was an encounter between a Collector ship and a turian patrol not far from your location. The patrol was lost but not before it disabled the ship. It’s been drifting for some time now and that gives us a rare opportunity.

“I need you to board that ship and connect EDI to its databases. If there’s anything on that ship that’ll give us an edge against the Collectors, she’ll find it.”


	4. The Collectors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might update twice a week rather than once a week, mostly because I don't want to spend fifteen weeks updating a fic. Next chapter will either be up later today or later in the week. And as always, thanks for reading.

Kaidan finds Shepard at the cockpit, watching over Joker’s shoulder while the pilot steers the Normandy alongside the drifting Collector cruiser. The behemoth is dark and EDI informs them that initial scans show no activity or heat signatures within.

Dread crawls up his spine. “I don’t like this.”

“I’m with Alenko,” Joker adds.

“But the Illusive Man is right,” Shepard says. “We don’t get another chance like this. Come on.” He taps Kaidan’s shoulder and heads to the elevator.

Joker catches Kaidan by the arm and says, “Watch his back, okay? I’m not losing him to the Collectors again.”

“I know,” he says. “Don’t worry.”

The nature of this mission demands that a small team departs in the Kodiak shuttle. Grunt barely acknowledges Kaidan’s presence, checking his shotgun’s rounds and mods while Shepard sits in the cockpit with Lawson, discussing strategy. Kaidan spends the tense minutes in the shuttle looking over his new tech armor’s specs; it was waiting in his locker and no one would tell him where it came from.

EDI directs them to a landing zone but Lawson doesn’t leave. “Just in case something goes wrong,” she explains.

They move through the cavernous hallway into the ship at a cautious pace but encounter no resistance from the Collectors. What they do find are mutilated human corpses piled next to ledges and opened pods like they were dumped in a hurry.

 _“Shepard,”_ EDI says, _“this ship’s signatures match the one that attacked Horizon.”_

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Kaidan says, staring at the pods lining the walls and dangling from the ceiling. “Think we’ll find any survivors?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Grunt says, peering cautiously at a pod leaning against the wall.

_“Grunt is correct. I detect no signs of life in these pods.”_

The deeper they go inside the Collector cruiser, the more anxious Kaidan gets. He blames it on the ship’s unnervingly organic build; after a lifetime of structured symmetrical vessels like the Normandy, he feels claustrophobic and disoriented walking through the twisting halls and up steep slopes. Even Grunt is skittish, keeping his shotgun between him and everything in the vessel. Shepard is the only one unfazed, until they find a research terminal and a dead Collector in an open pod.

 _“I have found something remarkable,”_ EDI informs them while analyzing the terminal’s data. _“I analyzed the Collector DNA and found only one other species that shares the same quad-strand structure - the Protheans.”_

The Collectors - and the memory of Saren’s fears about Sovereign - take on a new kind of horror. Kaidan can’t stand the sight of the dead Collector and instead watches Shepard examine an assault rifle sitting on top of a pile of discarded firearms. He tosses it to Kaidan before gesturing for them to move onward.

“So what do they want with the humans?” Grunt mutters.

_“I do not know. Perhaps another terminal will provide answers.”_

A few minutes later, Joker taps into the comm with even more disturbing news about the Collector ship.

 _“I had her triple-check the data,”_ he replies when Shepard voices suspicion.

_“I am not wrong, Shepard. This is the same vessel that attacked the SSV Normandy two years ago.”_

“I don’t believe this,” Kaidan says. “You’re telling me that this ship attacked us _twice_?”

“That’s not coincidence,” Shepard agrees. “Come on. Get what we need and then get the hell out. Maybe have Tali make those grenades and blow this place up before somebody else finds it.”

“Let me do it,” Grunt says. “It’ll be glorious and the Collectors will be deader than dead.”

They come to a standstill in the heart of the Collector ship, gaping at the millions upon millions of pods lining the walls and ceiling. If the Collectors intend to fill them all with human bodies, they’d have to leave the Terminus and strike out for Alliance space. The thought is frightening; this vessel easily destroyed the first Normandy and Horizon’s GARDIAN towers could only drive it away. Kaidan sees only disaster if the Collectors start harvesting everything within Council space.

“They’ll go to Earth,” he says.

“Not if we stop them first,” Shepard replies fiercely. “Come on.”

Their path ends at a raised platform with a center console. Shepard patches EDI in while Kaidan and Grunt keep a lookout. EDI may say nothing is showing up on the scanners but one never knows with these indoctrinated and cybernetically enhanced Reaper agents.

“This is too easy,” the krogan mutters while EDI mines the ship’s databases for information.

He’s entirely right.

The ship suddenly groans and various gears and gauges around the platform activate. Shepard demands an update and EDI announces the Collectors are springing a trap; before they can scramble off the platform, it hurtles into the air, throwing them off their feet.

_“I’m having difficulty maintaining connection. Someone else is in the system.”_

The platform abruptly stops in midair; Grunt nearly slides off it and Kaidan tumbles to the floor. Shepard manages to stay upright and pulls Kaidan to his feet before kicking Grunt’s shotgun to the krogan’s hands.

“All right?” Shepard asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kaidna spots two platforms flying towards them, each carrying a group of armed and very alive Collectors. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes!” Grunt crows.

* * *

The Collectors springing a trap using a false turian signal is one thing. EDI discovering that the Illusive Man knew it was a trap and sent Shepard anyway?

“Of course he’d screw us over,” Kaidan says. “It’s Cerberus. I told you, you can’t trust them-”

“Now’s not the time, Alenko,” Shepard says. “Once we’re back on the Normandy, you can yell at him all you want.”

 _“Yeah, give him a piece of my mind, too,”_ Joker adds. _“But you need to hurry; ship’s coming online and I’m not about to lose the Normandy or you again, Commander.”_

“EDI, I need the fastest route back to the shuttle. Warn Miranda; they might be coming for her, too.”

The AI leads them down a twisting narrow hall, opening and shutting doors to get them through and keep out the Collector forces. She can’t stop them all, though; a few Collectors land in a room from above, forcing Kaidan, Shepard, and Grunt into hiding.

“Assuming control,” a disjointed synthetic voice booms and a Collector seizes up, eyes glowing like fire while cybernetics augment its body. The transformation echoes Sovereign's seizure of Saren’s body in a last-ditch attempt to stop Shepard.

Could the Collectors even be considered Reaper agents? They’re just drones, controlled from dark space to do the Reapers’ bidding.

“What was that?” Grunt demands. He ducks when the enlarged Collector throws an unstable biotic field at him. His shotgun blast barely affects the fiery husk. “Come on, die already!”

“Concentrate fire on the others,” Shepard says while a biotic field curls around him. He streaks across the room to slam into the Collector, knocking it aside, and hurls a shockwave at another before it can attack.

Grunt laughs while blasting a Collector off the ledge. Kaidan groans inwardly and tries to cover them both from his incredibly defensible position. Grunt starts yelling at him to stop stealing kills so he turns his biotics and salvaged assault rifle on the controlled Collector drone instead. He casts out a warp field to shred it internally and when it turns on him, Shepard destroys it with a shotgun blast to its weakened carapace.

While sweeping up unused thermal clips from the dead Collectors, Kaidan notices Shepard favoring his right side. Shepard shrugs off his concerns, saying, “Cybernetics, don’t worry about it,” before moving on. Kaidan stares after him, a cold pit forming in his stomach.

Collectors swarm the next cavernous room they run into, forcing them to dive for cover. Grunt alternates between taking shots and bellowing, “I am krogan!” while barrelling into the startled Reaper drones. Shepard fixates on a newly augmented Collector and glows biotic blue but the corona abruptly dissipates when Kaidan grabs his arm.

“Don’t.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Shepard says. “I was trained for this, remember?”

“And I always told you to stop going in blind. If they’re following you, they’ll know how you fight; they could be waiting for you to separate yourself-”

“Enough talk!” Grunt yells at them and headbutts a Collector.

“Grunt’s right,” Shepard says. When Kaidan doesn’t let go, he adds, “Trust me.”

He knows but can’t help saying, “Cybernetics don’t make you invincible, Shepard.”

He turns to empty a clip into the fiery drone, distracting it, and rocks back on his feet when the commander storms past in a biotic blur.

More Collectors appear the closer they get to the shuttle, swarming the halls and flying in from the upper levels. Kaidan suspects that they’re becoming desperate, too; they took a risk luring Shepard here but now the cruiser is taking too long coming back to full power. EDI continues showing them the way back but when she has to reroute them past an unhackable door, he wonders if the Collectors have something in mind to keep them on the ship.

It’s not an ambush but a near thing; Collectors fly in during an uphill climb out of a cavernous room and send human husks after them. Transformed colonists? Kaidan doesn’t want to think about it. He throws himself into the fight, helping Shepard keep the husks off the krogan juggernaut headbutting and blasting Collectors right and left.

 _“You’re almost there,”_ EDI provides helpfully while another voice says, “Assuming control.”

Trusting his tech armor’s shields to hold, Kaidan follows Grunt’s path of destruction into the frenzy, tossing Collectors around and ripping them apart from the inside with his biotics. He advances on the fiery Collector drone bombarding Grunt with powerful fields, firing at its exposed back and ignoring attacks from other Collectors. It turns on him while he ejects a thermal clip from the assault rifle and Grunt roars, rushing the Collector and crushing it against the wall.

“Watch your six,” Grunt warns, swinging his shotgun around just as Kaidan’s shields overload.

The armor’s ablation system kicks in and detonates his shields, staggering advancing Collectors within its radius. Kaidan shoots them before they recover and the krogan laughs in disbelief, slapping him on the back before charging at the next wave of Collectors and husks.

“Kaidan!” Shepard shouts.

He turns around at the distinct sound of advancing explosive fields and a biotic shockwave hits him squarely in the chest.

* * *

“Where the hell were you?” Lawson demands while throwing biotic fields at the advancing Collectors from the Kodiak’s cargo door. Kaidan flinches when a field comes dangerously close to ripping his head off. “Didn’t you hear Joker?”

“When did we not hear Joker,” Grunt replies while blowing a Collector apart with his shotgun. “Alenko got hit and Shepard went nuts on them. It was great.”

“You _what_?”

“It was not great,” Shepard says while helping Kaidan limp into a seat, “but they were in the way and we’re running out of time. Miranda, get us out of here.”

 _“I totally agree with the commander,”_ Joker hollers through the comm. _“Ship’s weapons are coming online; get the hell out of there now!”_

Cursing, Lawson throws herself into the cockpit. Grunt leaps into the Kodiak and the shuttle flees to the waiting Normandy. Kaidan pulls his helmet off and stares out the window at the Collector cruiser until the Normandy obstructs his view. The Kodiak skids into the hangar and only Shepard’s iron grip on his shoulder keeps him seated.

“Stay here,” Shepard tells him, hauls Grunt to his feet, and sprints to the elevator shaft, stopping only to tell a crewman to fetch Chakwas. He starts shouting orders to Garrus and Joker before disappearing inside the elevator.

The next time Kaidan opens his eyes, he and Lawson are the only ones still inside the shuttle. She stands in front of him, staring intently and ignoring the crew decontaminating the shuttle’s exterior and patching the damage to the hangar bay.

“What?” he croaks. Speaking is painful, one of his eyes is swelling shut, and his broken armor may be the only thing holding him together.

“We’re going to have a chat,” Lawson declares and he instinctively sits up despite the pain. Chakwas is stepping out of the elevator, though, and the Cerberus officer has second thoughts. “We’ll talk later, Alenko.”

* * *

Kaidan doesn’t leave the medical bay for two days and misses Shepard giving the Illusive Man a piece of his mind over the “derelict” Collector ship. But for what it’s worth, EDI successfully mined the ship’s databases to learn how the Collectors use the mysterious Omega-4 relay deep within the Terminus Systems.

“You were _right there_ ,” Garrus says later. “Why didn’t EDI say anything? You could’ve taken their IFF and stranded them here. Would’ve served them right, too.”

“The ship was coming online,” Tali counters, arms crossed. “Mining for data can be time-consuming, even for an AI. They never would’ve found it and gotten out in time.”

Shepard won’t stop pacing around the medical bay, looking ready to tear his hair out, so Kaidan says, “What else did EDI find out?”

The commander pulls up his omni-tool, showing them a holo of the galaxy’s swirling arms and a glowing dot. “That’s the Omega-4 relay. EDI analyzed the ship’s flight data to find their base. This is where the relay takes them.”

A tap and the dot moves in a spiral, mimicking the ship’s trajectory, until it stops at the galactic core. Tali’s arms drop to her side and Kaidan almost falls off the bed leaning over for a second and third look.

“That’s impossible,” he breathes, staring at the glowing dot. “How can they survive there?”

“The most logical way is to use advanced mass effect fields to protect themselves,” Tali says. “Reapers would have that technology.”

“Explains why no other ship ever returned,” Garrus says. “Always thought this mission was bad news but hitting them at the galactic core? You sure know how to pick them, Shepard.”

Shepard smiles tightly and minimizes the display. “That’s why I’m telling you now. Once we find and install one of their IFFs, there’s no going back.”

“You think we’re not surviving this,” Kaidan says. 

“Yeah. So if you plan to stick around, you should probably take care of unfinished business. Or,” and Shepard hesitates. “If you can’t do this, just tell me and I’ll drop you off wherever you want to go. No hard feelings.”

Tali scoffs. “As if we’d leave you.”

His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Just… give it some thought.”

Chakwas eventually returns and throws everyone but Kaidan out of the bay. He watches Shepard leave, pity and yearning roiling in his bruised chest. What a lonely fate for humanity’s first Spectre, knowing he was brought back from the dead only to fight the Reapers and their agents, sacrificing himself to save the galaxy from a threat others refuse to acknowledge. Kaidan wants to call him back to talk, like they used to during their off-duty hours before the Collectors attacked two years ago.

Instead, he watches Shepard head to the starboard observation deck, presumably to inform its resident justicar about the Collectors’ base.

“Did you hear?” he asks Chakwas while she scans his various healing bruises and fractures.

“I did. I’ve lived through a lot in my lifetime but to journey to the galactic core? That’ll be something.”

“You could say that,” he says and spends the next several hours contemplating the out Shepard gave him.


	5. Impasse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was hoping to post this on Friday but couldn't stop nitpicking bits and pieces of it for days until I got sick and tired of words. On the other hand, I tightened the hell out of the dialogue so hopefully everything I want to convey expresses itself clearly enough.
> 
> Next update will be on Monday since it's a holiday.

Chakwas orders Kaidan not to go planetside for eight days, leaving him with far more downtime than he likes. It also means Miranda makes good on her “threat”.

The Normandy is orbiting Pragia, home to aggressive vegetation and abandoned Cerberus research facilities. Jack has history there and asked for Shepard’s help destroying the building. The Kodiak left three hours ago.

“I almost couldn’t sit through the reports,” Shepard’s yeoman says in the mess. “Forcing children to fight each other to the death using stimuli? It’s a wonder anyone survived.”

Kaidan lowers his fork. “It’s Cerberus. What did you expect?”

“If you must know, Mr. Alenko, I have it on good authority that the Illusive Man himself ordered the Teltin facility to close. His only interest was in helping biotic children, not in what was done to Jack.” Chambers levels him with a look. “Their methods can be extreme but Cerberus only exists to advance humanity.”

“Seriously? Experimenting on husks, rachni, Thorian creepers, murdering Alliance admirals, setting thresher maws on colonists and marines, and now this? Sure doesn’t sound like any humanity’s being advanced.”

Appetite lost, he stands and carries his tray to the mess sergeant, ignoring the several pairs of eyes on his back. When he turns around, Chambers is still watching him but with narrowed, calculating eyes.

“You’re talking about Akuze,” she declares like it’s a revelation.

He decides to stay away from Cerberus personnel for the next several hours and heads to the elevator shaft. Of course, that’s when Lawson steps out of her office.

“Just the man I wanted to see,” she says cheerfully.

With everyone watching, Kaidan resigns himself to another hour-long interrogation. What he doesn’t expect is for Lawson to turn around as soon as the door shuts to say, “Explain your relationship with Shepard.”

“... sorry?”

“I’ll rephrase. What was the nature of your relationship with him two years ago?”

Why is she asking this? Kaidan folds his arms and says, “Why would this matter to you?”

“I’m second-in-command of this ship. It’s my job to make sure everything is running smoothly and that includes the commander’s well-being. Do you have any idea how much we’re investing in this, in him?”

“You brought him back from the dead.”

“The Illusive Man spared no expense with the Lazarus Project,” she says. “An extraordinary threat like the Reapers requires an extraordinary response. We gave Shepard a ship and crew, picked the best people for his team, and made every effort to _not_ get in his way.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it.” 

“How I feel doesn’t matter,” she retorts. “I look for anything that can compromise him and this mission. Like Horizon. I review all reports before sending them to the Illusive Man and found… discrepancies in the Horizon ones. I asked Garrus for clarification.” A pause. “You and Ashley Williams were very close to Shepard.”

“We survived Eden Prime,” he replies stiffly. “What we saw there, what we learned, it changed us.”

“It changed everything,” Lawson says. “And after? During your mission to stop Saren? How close were you and Shepard?”

She draws nearer with every word, sharp blue eyes boring into his. He doesn’t flinch, unwilling to give her the satisfaction, but his mind races, questions stumbling into each other. What happened after Horizon? What was in those reports? What did Garrus tell her?

What is Lawson looking for?

“Why do you care?” he asks.

“If we’re lucky, the Omega-4 relay will be a one-way trip,” she says. “With that inevitability hanging over our heads, how focused will the team be on the mission? A single critical error in judgment can prove costly, a fatal mistake that dooms us and the galaxy. Do you really want that?”

“What about the crew?”

“Cerberus took care of everything. It’s Shepard’s team that needs to have its head on straight.”

“What about you?”

Uncertainty flickers across Lawson’s face. “That’s my business.”

“Then what makes you think this is yours?” Kaidan says. “You don’t know what Shepard and I’ve been through. Eden Prime, Virmire, Ilos, Sovereign, battle of the Citadel, I was there for everything. I was there when he died. And you’re asking me this, after Horizon?”

Lawson opens her mouth but says nothing. The gears turn behind her sharp eyes and he braces for another question.

Instead, the door opens and Shepard says, “Am I interrupting something?”

He’s still in armor, now personalized with dings, scrapes, scorch marks, and blood splatter. A bruise is fading on his left cheek and his dark hair is in complete disarray. Gray-blue eyes flick between them, assessing the situation.

“We were just discussing a small matter,” Lawson says calmly, stepping out of Kaidan’s space. “It’s resolved now.”

Kaidan takes longer to respond. “What she said. It’s nothing important.”

“Uh huh,” Shepard says. “While we were planting a bomb in Jack’s old room, Cerberus Command tracked down the MSV Strontium Mule. They want the cargo. Want you there, Miranda.”

“Understood,” she says and turns her back on them. Kaidan takes it as his cue to leave.

As soon as the door closes, he asks, “Really?”

Shepard shrugs. “If they’re happy, they’ll stay out of my way. Besides, Blue Suns hijacked the ship. Thought freeing its crew would be something up your alley.”

He relaxes. “Okay.” Then, “You want me there, don’t you?”

The commander strides away. “Think of it as a team-building exercise.”

* * *

Kaidan goes up to the captain’s cabin hours after leaving the drifting Strontium Mule. He needs to talk about a certain Cerberus officer and the only private place to do so is Shepard’s quarters. 

The door opens before he can announce himself and he walks in to see steam still escaping the bathroom and Shepard sitting at his private terminal, wearing only briefs and a damp towel around his shoulders. Kaidan raises an eyebrow at his state of undress and then keeps staring at the lack of scars on the man’s shoulders and back. 

“Remember Toombs?” Shepard asks without preamble.

“Corporal Toombs, right?” Kaidan says. He tears his eyes away and goes to Shepard’s side to study the meticulously built model ships on display in the glass case. Of course Cerberus knew Shepard’s hobbies. “The other Akuze survivor.”

“He has a team now. They’re running down anyone affiliated with Cerberus.” Shepard leans back and looks up at Kaidan. “Apparently, I’m not excluded.”

“I don’t see him walking out of that one intact,” Kaidan says. Mention of Akuze reminds him why he’s here. “Is Lawson always like this or does she have something against me personally?”

Shepard frowns. “Like what, exactly?”

“She keeps asking me questions. Isn’t my dossier enough?”

“No idea. Cerberus probably has their own way of screening people and she can’t find what she’s looking for in yours. And you know dossiers don’t tell the whole story.”

_“You didn’t have anything to lose or prove. That’s probably one of the reasons why the Illusive Man never considered you.”_

“I thought you said the Illusive Man didn’t interfere,” Kaidan says.

“He doesn’t but he has this annoying habit of getting me to do what he wants anyway.”

Kaidan leans against the desk and levels Shepard with a look. “So what am I? Your little act of rebellion?”

“A friend. I don’t trust Cerberus. The team I’m putting together is good but I need people I know I could trust with my life.”

“You know you can trust me,” Kaidan says. _Even after everything I said on Horizon._

Shepard smiles like in the early days of their hunt for Saren and in the weeks after saving the Council and Citadel. “Never doubted you, Kaidan.”

He stands and clasps a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder before going to his locker. “Someone sent Jacob a message about a ship his father served on that disappeared a decade ago. He wants to investigate so we’re going to the Rosetta Nebula.” He pauses while holding a pair of gauntlets. “Don’t take it personally. That’s just who she is.”

Kaidan lingers for a moment longer, watching Shepard put on his undersuit, and leaves the cabin.

* * *

Kaidan doesn’t know what to make of Jacob Taylor. Taylor was Alliance so he knows Cerberus’s history as a black ops that went rogue. He knows what experiments they ran and all the lives lost as a result. Why would he join them?

“I’m not the enemy here,” Taylor says while nursing a purple cocktail on the port observation deck. “And you stuck with them even when they said all that crap about Shepard and Saren’s attack on the Citadel.”

Kaidan has nothing to counter with so he stares out the window at the stars. He’s not sure what cluster they’re in now or what to think of Shepard’s refusal to linger until the Alliance arrived to rescue the Hugo Gernsback’s survivors.

He wonders what else the Lazarus Project did to the commander.

Goto’s corner of the Normandy is full of stories about her favorite heists. The master thief herself is nowhere to be seen but he knows she’s nearby. 

“So why did you?” Taylor eventually asks.

He considers pouring himself a drink from the bar. “The Alliance was all I had left. They… they kept me sane those first months.”

“Can’t imagine what that was like. It’s always bad losing good people but now that I’ve been here a few months, I can see why. Worse to lose him the way you did.” Taylor swirls the contents of his tumbler. “Still doesn’t excuse what they did to his name.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“That’s why I joined,” Taylor says. “I was on Eden Prime when Saren attacked. I know what I saw but if they wouldn’t listen to a Spectre, why pay attention to a marine? So, I quit. Then Miranda found me, convinced me to join. Cerberus believed what happened at the Citadel. They believed what I saw on Eden Prime. They believed _me_. I don’t like how they do things or why, but at least they’re doing _something_.”

“That’s why I’m here,” Kaidan sighs.

Tensions ease somewhat, which might be why Taylor says, “I saw the footage.”

He should ask EDI to destroy all recordings, including Joker’s backups and backups of backups. “Yeah, not my proudest moment.”

Taylor shrugs. “Hey, it happens. Politics turns everything into pure misery. What else can you do?”

“Did you drunkenly call your former CO to complain about the brass grounding you on the off chance you might abandon your post to join him?” Kaidan asks dryly.

“I signed on with Cerberus, a ‘known terrorist organization’. Guess how many from my old platoon want to stay in contact?”

He’ll give Taylor that.

Time ticks by and then he says, “You were there when he woke up.”

“I was there for the whole thing. Man,” and Taylor shakes his head. “It was not pretty. _He_ was not pretty. Barely looked human. It took two years rebuilding him. Blew our budget and then some, but whatever Miranda and the scientists asked for, the Illusive Man gave it. We were almost done when one of the scientists went rogue.”

“I heard.” Shepard told him after they left Illium with a justicar, an assassin, and Liara’s confession about her role in his resurrection. “The Illusive Man didn’t want anything changed? Not even a little?”

“What, like a control chip? Miranda wanted to put one in but he wouldn’t let her. Said it’ll affect Shepard’s personality. He wanted Shepard back _exactly_ as he was.”

Except that the Shepard that returned was the Shepard from two years ago. He came back after the galaxy had moved on, when Kaidan was climbing the ranks within the Alliance, Garrus was wreaking havoc on Omega, Tali was with the Flotilla, Wrex was uniting the clans on Tuchanka, and Liara was brokering information instead of history.

Then, forty-eight months after Shepard and the Normandy went down, rumors surfaced of a dead Spectre walking.

Liara observed that Kaidan had the least to gain from this mission. He knows what he’ll lose and yet here he is, throwing away the life he made to follow his old commander to certain death. Is that what he really wants?

“What am I doing here?” Kaidan says, pressing fingertips to his temple.

Taylor hands him a drink.


	6. An Uncertain Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That bit in the previous chapter where Miranda said she asked Garrus about Horizon? I did write something for it, which can be found [here](http://shirozora-writes.tumblr.com/post/137543623229/so-basically-i-fell-into-hell-when-i-made-a). I wrote it before I decided to write this fic, so things aren't going to be in perfect alignment. 
> 
> This was a troublesome chapter (most introspective "thinky" chapters and scenes are imo) so I hope I got across everything I wanted to say.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, commenting, and leaving kudos.

A pattern slowly emerges.

The crew starts calling or sending recordings home. Two crewmen on the bridge take to talking about shore leave and an appointment with the Consort Sha’ira as something to look forward to, a reason to keep going.

Everybody else comes to Shepard for help.

“Remember the job I told you about when you picked me up?” Massani says while the Kodiak approaches the planet Neith. “They’re getting real antsy about those Suns in their factory.”

“We’ll go there next,” Shepard says and continues reading something on a datapad.

“What job?” Kaidan asks.

“Zorya. Was hired to liberate an Eldfell-Ashland refinery from the Blue Suns.” Massani sits back and fixes Kaidan with a look. “I finish every job I pick up. Why do you think Cerberus hired me?”

That may explain his reputation and prowess but Kaidan suspects Massani has his own reasons for insisting on finishing this job.

The shuttle’s VI warns them of inclement weather as they step out and behold the wreckage of a merchant freighter. Massani searches for salvageable parts while Kaidan follows Shepard to the source of the distress call.

“Look at this,” Kaidan says, picking up a cracked datapad with the cargo manifest. “They were shipping mechs.”

“Then where are they?” Shepard wonders.

The wind picks up while Shepard disables the ship’s transmitter, bringing in clouds of reddish dust. Kaidan squints through the growing storm at a strange glint in the distance, then shoves Shepard down when a LOKI fires.

“Found them,” he says while Massani’s concussive round blows it apart.

The VI reminds them to return to the shuttle immediately while the sandstorm strengthens, shrouding the crash site in red. No one can see the mechs until they’re close enough to hit point-blank but that also means the mechs can’t miss.

“Son of a bitch,” Massani mutters when five LOKIs advance, firing submachine rounds. He takes cover next to Kaidan and pops a thermal clip while his armor’s shields regenerate. “Can’t see for shit.”

“Hang on.” Shepard tosses a biotic shockwave ahead of them. The howling winds don’t drown out the sound of synthetics breaking apart.

Kaidan follows it with a throw field and ducks when a mech’s head flies back. Massani shoots down whatever survived the biotic crossfire but more keep walking into their line of sight.

“How many of these bastards are there?”

“Manifesto lists a hundred-eighty LOKI units,” Kaidan replies while overloading two mechs’ systems and shooting a third through its processing unit. “And a YMIR.”

Shepard’s head tilts to Kaidan. “There’s a rogue YMIR out there?”

Something moves through the sandstorm. Massani swears and takes aim at the silhouette of a hulking mech lumbering towards them. “Heads up.”

YMIRs are tedious to put down on a good day and this is not a good day. LOKIs try to flank them and the sandstorm cloaks the YMIR, keeping them from getting a clear shot at its unprotected head and weak points. The mech’s heavy machine guns break down the pieces of wreckage they’re hiding behind, forcing them to sprint for cover or risk being caught in the open.

“Can you overload it?” Shepard asks while trying to blow its head off. He misses and the YMIR swings its left arm around.

“Been trying but these things were built to last.” Kaidan tries again and the mech’s joints spark. “That should-”

The YMIR fires a missile at him and Shepard. He throws Shepard out of the way and overloads the missile; it explodes and flings him back. His ears ring and static fills his comm.

“... come on, come on,” Massani says, hauling him to his feet. “We need to go.”

Kaidan blinks at the smoking wreckage of the YMIR; the detonated missile also destroyed surrounding LOKIs. Shepard is nowhere to be seen.

“Where’s Shepard?”

“No idea.” Massani hauls him back before he bolts into the storm. “Don’t be a fool.”

“I’m not leaving him here-”

“He’s Commander Shepard. If all the stories I heard are true, he’ll turn up at the shuttle. Do you want to stand around here like an idiot or help me blast a path through those goddamn mechs?”

His training kicks in and Kaidan nods while prying a pistol from a scorched mech. “Let’s go.”

He keeps looking over his shoulder while they shoot down rogue LOKIs, trusting his aim and instincts to carry him forward. He searches for Shepard but can’t see through the storm or hail him over the comm.

“Come on, Shepard,” he mutters. “Where the hell are you? Don’t do this to me-”

Massani shoves him out of the way of a LOKI and blows it apart. “Either get your head back in here or I’m leaving your sorry ass behind on this miserable planet.”

Kaidan responds by sweeping up a group of LOKIs and slamming them into the cliffside. The effort leaves him lightheaded and swaying but Massani doesn’t need to know that.

They run past the broken mechs to the waiting Kodiak but more LOKIs emerge from the dust, nailing an unsuspecting Massani in the shoulder and dropping him. Kaidan grabs his assault rifle and holds them back until the rifle jams on the last thermal clip. He then tries to throw the mechs aside with his biotics but the field fails to form. LOKIs converge on him and Massani, and then Shepard plows through the mechs, burning biotic blue.

“Sorry I’m late,” the commander says, kicking aside a mech’s head.

“Where the hell have you been?” the mercenary grumbles while limping into the shuttle.

“I got lost. Sandstorm. It happens,” Shepard says. “Kaidan?”

“Yeah,” Kaidan breathes out. “Let’s go.” 

He picks up Massani’s rifle and drops it in the mercenary’s lap while taking a seat. He stares at the commander’s scorched armor while Shepard orders the VI to take them back to the Normandy, trying to ignore his shaking hands.

* * *

“So,” and Massani drops into the chair across from him, propping boots up on the mess table. “What the hell was that back there?”

Kaidan only glances at the older man while chewing on a protein bar like it’ll make both his headache and Massani go away.

“Alliance commander, am I right? You don’t get where you are by losing your goddamn mind over your CO dropping in the field, and I sure as shit wasn’t planning on dying down there from someone else’s incompetence.”

He takes another bite, wishing manufacturers could get more creative with their flavors. He also wishes Massani would leave or get to the point.

“Heard that Collector ship we boarded was the same one that blew apart the first Normandy. That’s one hell of a coincidence. I’d have gone on board with every explosive I could get my hands on. Blew it up as soon as that AI got what it needed, or at least punched a hole in its side.”

What is he getting at?

“This shit’s way above my pay grade. Really puts everything into perspective. Makes you sort of feel small. Was that what the whole Saren business was like? Thought a Spectre went rogue with a bunch of geth in tow only to find out the Reapers were an actual thing and they wanted to wipe us out?”

Kaidan gives up. He digs fingertips into his throbbing right temple and says, “Yes. What’s your point?”

Massani drops his feet to the floor and stands. “Don’t got one. But do me a favor and don’t lose your goddamn shit again. Be professional or don’t watch my back.”

The mercenary leaves and Kaidan buries his face in his hands. He only has himself to blame for the near disaster on Neith and deserves every critical word Massani dropped on him. None of his bad days in the Alliance went off the rails like it did hours ago and it kills him to know the reason why. 

He can’t let it happen again. He’s an Alliance officer and knows better, but nothing could stop that first sharp pang of panic when he couldn’t find Shepard and only heard static on the comm link. It had gnawed at him incessantly, driving him to distraction, and nearly got Massani and himself killed. 

And the relief he felt when Shepard burst onto the scene, alive and well? 

Kaidan balls up the wrapper before tossing it into the trash compactor. He heads to the crew quarters to sleep, bracing himself for several hours of endless space and Joker’s fragile voice telling him that Shepard went down with the SSV Normandy.

* * *

The Normandy orbits Zorya while Shepard helps Massani complete his last job. With everything in limbo until they return, Kaidan checks his gear, cleans his firearms, browses the extranet, and wanders to the ship’s library on the starboard observation deck. After spending an hour reading the same two pages, he gives up and goes to the main battery room.

“Alenko,” Garrus greets, eyes fixed on the weapons console.

He sits on a crate near EDI’s platform and stares at the heavy scarring on Garrus’s right mandible. “Been thinking about Shepard’s offer.”

Garrus stops checking his calculations. “You want to leave.”

“I don’t ‘want’ to. Just thinking about it.”

Garrus turns to him, eyes narrowed and calculating. “Why would you even consider it? It’s-”

“Shepard, I know.” He sighs. “Had a chat with Liara when we were on Illium. She told me what she thought about the people the Illusive Man told Shepard to recruit.”

“Did the Illusive Man know I was Archangel or was my resume just that impressive?”

“If I ever see him again, I’ll ask but I doubt he’ll tell me anything.” He drums his fingers on his thigh, thinking about what Liara said about him. “Most of the people Shepard brought here, they want something in return. But that doesn’t apply to me. I was doing fine before Horizon and I still would be afterwards if I hadn’t-”

“Gotten drunk?” Garrus says.

“Is there anyone on this ship who doesn’t know how I got here?”

“You have to admit, it makes quite a story. Probably not the entrance you hoped for. Certainly not dignified.”

He can’t help laughing at Garrus’s dry words. “Yeah, well. That’s not really a reason why I should stick around. Taylor’s already doing everything I’d be doing, so what am I doing here?”

Garrus stares at him for an uncomfortably long moment. “Did someone hit you on the head?”

“A LOKI almost shot it off.” He can’t maintain eye contact and looks elsewhere, hands clenched.. “Because I… I screwed up. Back on Neith? Sandstorm came in, turned visibility to nothing. I - we lost Shepard when a YMIR fired a missile at us. I didn’t handle it well.”

“I see.”

“I made mistakes I shouldn’t have,” Kaidan says. “We’d be dead if Shepard hadn’t come in at the last second.”

“So one life-threatening blunder is enough to convince you this isn’t the place to be? Really, Alenko?”

“It’s not just that.” He considers his last actual conversation with Lawson. “What happened after Horizon?”

Garrus cocks his head. “We had a ship-wide debriefing about the mission. It was bad and we knew-”

“No, I mean.” He presses his lips into a thin line. “What I said to Shepard. How did he…?”

Garrus’s head tilts the other way. “Apparently, he put the Illusive Man on hold for over an hour. Didn’t want to see or talk to anyone. You hurt him and they knew it. Well, Lawson knew. Probably that Kelly Chambers, too. Way too intuitive, if you ask me.”

He swallows hard. “I never should’ve said those things.” A deep breath. “Lawson’s been asking me questions. She obviously doesn’t trust me but the last time… she thinks I’m a distraction. That Shepard can’t focus when I’m around.”

“That’s ridiculous. She didn’t interrogate me or Tali.”

“You know why we barely escaped that Collector ship? One of those fused husks hit me when my shields were down and Shepard lost it.” What he remembers are impressions of Shepard blowing husks and Collectors apart while Grunt cheered. EDI had to repeatedly say they were running out of time for the biotic onslaught to end. “I can’t be the one who compromises this mission.”

Garrus shakes his head. “I think you got it all wrong. Stakes might be much higher and sure, we’re surrounded by Cerberus, but what actually changed?”

“Liara and Wrex aren’t here.” _Ash isn’t here, and Shepard was dead for two years._

“True, but we have a justicar and Grunt,” Garrus says. “You know Shepard would do anything for us. He needs that, too, people who he knows will watch his back no matter what.”

“Which you’re already doing.”

“Yeah, but,” and Garrus hesitates. His mandibles twitch while he searches for the right words. “I think you being here… it gives him something to look forward to when he’s planetside.”

“Oh. I see.” Kaidan suddenly, desperately needs to be alone so he stands and leaves the room. “Thanks, Garrus.”

“No problem, Alenko.” The door closes on Garrus saying, “Delete this conversation, EDI. Cerberus shouldn’t have it-”

Kaidan sits at the mess for the next two hours, running Garrus’s words through his head over and over. What actually changed? That list could go on forever but some things haven’t, not even after all this time. They never had a chance to talk about it before Shepard died but if Garrus is right, then maybe....

When the Kodiak returns, Kaidan heads down to the cargo bay with a curious decon crew. Massani storms out of the shuttle, covered in ash and muttering about “playing a goddamn hero _after_ shooting his face off.” Following close behind are Tali and Goto; Tali nods to Kaidan before continuing a lively discussion about omni-tool models and uses. Shepard is the last off the shuttle, wiping soot off his face and armor.

“What happened this time?” Kaidan asks, eyeing him and the dusting of ash inside the shuttle critically. 

“Zaeed set the refinery on fire,” Shepard says, steering him back to the elevator with a hand on his shoulder. “Convinced him to help put it out instead of chasing his former partner. Did you know he co-founded the Blue Suns? Santiago, the other guy, kicked him out by blowing half his face off.”

“So that’s why he took the job.” After some thought, he says, “You let Santiago get away. Is Massani going to be trouble later?”

“Nope,” Shepard says, rocking back and forth on his feet while the elevator carries them up. “Talked sense into him. Helps that Eldfell-Ashland paid a lot more for saving their refinery and people.”

“Guess that works.” He glances at Shepard, Garrus’s halting words running circles in his head. _You being here… it gives him something to look forward to-_

“What?” Shepard asks and he realizes he’s been staring at the commander for too long. “Something on my face?”

There is, actually; a line of black ash runs along the left side where his scar used to be. Because Kaidan’s been on a streak lately, he reaches over and mutters, “Right here,” while wiping the soot away.

Shepard’s breath hitches and Kaidan freezes. The moment passes and Shepard shakes his head while stepping back. “I need a shower. Everything smells burned.”

“Okay.” Why won’t the elevator go faster? He almost bolts when the door opens on the third deck. “We'll talk later.”

He hides in the starboard observation deck until Samara comes in to take her customary spot on the floor in front of the large window, and he continues to stay, ignoring her curious glance to stare at the stars.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I somewhat unintentionally patterned Zaeed's mostly one-sided conversation with Kaidan on how Shepard interacts with him in the game, which made writing the scene pretty amusing.


	7. Rites of Passage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a terribly busy, tiring week so I couldn't post this sooner. 
> 
> Part of the reason is that I made a ficmix and drew the cover art for it, because go big or go home, amirite?
> 
>  **[a thousand eyes staring back :: a mass effect ficmix](http://8tracks.com/shirozora/a-thousand-eyes-staring-back)** @ 8tracks*
> 
>  
> 
> *the mix _might_ give away bits and pieces of the plot, fyi

When Shepard acts like what happened in the elevator five days ago didn’t, Kaidan lets it go. They have more important things to worry about, like Grunt’s recent uncontrollably violent behavior.

“There you are,” Shepard says and crashes on the couch next to Kaidan on the starboard observation deck. “Thought you’d be in the mess.”

“Too much traffic,” Kaidan says. He glances up from his datapad when Shepard sighs. “What’s wrong?”

“Grunt. He almost punched a hole in the side of the cargo hold,” Shepard says. “Well, he did but didn’t break anything. He thinks he’s sick so we’re going to Tuchanka. If anyone knows how to fix up a krogan, it’s Wrex.”

“I have never been to Tuchanka,” Samara muses. “I should like to see it.”

“How’s Wrex doing?” Kaidan asks. 

“Like his usual self. Has his hands full trying to unite all the clans. Did I tell you? After Horizon, Mordin learned the Blood Pack had his protege Maelon on Tuchanka. They’re both STG and worked on the genophage project so you can imagine how serious the situation was.”

“He’s STG? No wonder Cerberus wanted him here.”

“You should’ve seen him on Omega. Anyway. Turns out, Maelon wanted to cure the genophage but went about it in the worst possible way. He joined Clan Weyrloc since they wanted to use the cure to topple Wrex.”

“I’m guessing that didn’t happen.”

“Convinced Mordin to let Maelon go and save a copy of his work before deleting it, just in case.” Shepard pauses and then sheepishly adds, “May have also wiped out the clan. Chief Guld was a pain in the ass.”

“Of course you did,” Kaidan mutters.

The intercom crackles and Grunt shouts, _“Make this ship go faster, Shepard!”_

The commander groans and slouches on the couch. Samara tilts her head thoughtfully. “He is like an anxious, rebellious child.”

“You sure he’s sick?” Kaidan asks.

“Won’t know for sure ‘til we get there.” Shepard taps his omni-tool and says, “Almost there, Grunt. Don’t break anything.”

_“... too late.”_

Swearing, Shepard vaults over the couch and bolts out of the room. Kaidan looks over his shoulder to see the commander swerve around a startled crewman and into the elevator. Shaking his head, he turns back to his datapad and notices Samara watching him, eyes still glowing.

“He is at ease around you,” she says and continues meditating.

* * *

“He didn’t tell you that, did he, boy?” Urdnot Wrex says after snapping at Gatatog Uvenk about Grunt’s tank-born origin. “He’s not ill, Shepard. He’s come of age and needs to go through the rite of passage.”

“Like entering the maiden stage,” Samara muses while Kaidan says, “He’s going through puberty. Why does everything happen around you?”

“No idea,” Shepard says. “Wrex, what’s this rite?”

“You’ll have to talk to the shaman. He knows the old ways.” Wrex then looks at Kaidan. “Alenko.”

His tone compels Kaidan to stay while the others pick their way through the pile of rubble serving as Wrex’s throne room. He eyes the scarred krogan warily, wondering where they now stand. “Wrex. Been a while.”

“Agreed. Last I saw Shepard, he was working with Cerberus. Did that change?”

“No. I’m just here to make sure the Alliance looks like they care.”

“Ha.” Wrex sits back on his throne and nods to where Shepard, Grunt, and Samara went. “Watch yourselves. The rite of passage was made for krogans.”

Kaidan reaches the top of the stairs to see Shepard rubbing his forehead and the shaman saying, “I like you, human!”

Uvenk is also rubbing his head while storming past Kaidan with his followers, muttering about aliens and Wrex dooming the krogan race. While the shaman gives Grunt an overview of Tuchanka’s history, Kaidan sidles over to Shepard and looks at him reproachfully.

“When in Rome….” Shepard says with a shrug and then answers the shaman’s call for Grunt’s krantt.

“All of you?” the shaman asks skeptically. “Not enough room in the tomkah for all four plus myself and witnesses.”

“Then I will remain here,” Samara says. “There are… certain things I wish to observe.”

Kaidan recalls her looking distastefully at a varren fighting pit and hopes her oath to Shepard is stronger than her code.

“Excellent,” the shaman says and heads to the stairs. “Get whatever weapons you need and meet me at the tomkah. You’ll need them.”

The Rite involves activating a so-called keystone in the heart of a ruined city, which causes a giant piston to hit the ground and summon Tuchanka’s violent wildlife. The shaman’s voice booms from the loudspeaker each time Shepard or Grunt hits the keystone, explaining the significance of each stage and its relation to Tuchanka’s history to Grunt.

A few seconds after the piston hammers the hard ground for a third time, Grunt says, “Feel that?”

The ground trembles for a few unnerving seconds but no varren or giant fire-breathing incendiary insect appears. Something rumbles underfoot and Shepard says, “Oh no.”

“What?” Kaidan asks, scanning the ruins for trouble.

Shepard doesn’t answer. Instead, he sprints to the raised ledge on the other side of the courtyard and pulls out a prototype heavy weapon that Mordin’s lab built days earlier. Kaidan and Grunt glance at each other before following the commander into cover and readying their firearms.

Nobody’s quite prepared for the thresher maw rising from the earth. Even Grunt is in awe, uttering an uncharacteristic, “Whoa,” while the massive creature roars, displaying its bioluminescent maw and dripping acid. Kaidan wishes the M35 Mako was available to commandeer against it, a thought that never crossed his mind before. He flinches when the thresher maw roars again and acid splashes onto the ground, dissolving concrete and rusted metal.

Shepard swings the Cain over the ledge. “Not today,” he says and squeezes the trigger. The Cain kicks back while spitting a slug into the thresher maw’s mouth, cracking his armor.

Grunt throws his arms up in sheer exuberance when the slug detonates, shredding the thresher maw from the inside out. It crashes onto the proving grounds, barely missing crushing Grunt while toppling buildings. Kaidan sags against a broken pillar, laughter bubbling up in his throat because _they just killed a thresher maw on foot_ , but Shepard stares stonily at the body, the Cain held loosely in his hands.

“Shepard?” Kaidan shakes his shoulder when the commander doesn’t respond, startling him. “You okay?”

Shepard doesn’t answer. He powers down the heavy weapon and hooks it onto his back, and then whirls around when Uvenk and his krantt enter the proving grounds. “Look who’s finally interested in you, Grunt.”

“Let’s see what he wants,” Grunt says cheerfully, hefting his shotgun. “We just killed a thresher maw. I’m ready for _anything_.”

* * *

“Why do I even bother,” Chakwas sighs two hours later in the medical bay, plucking the last shard of armor plating from Shepard’s shoulder. “Even if you had a concussion from headbutting a mature krogan, I wouldn’t be able to tell.”

“Who told you?” Shepard asks.

She nods to Grunt, who’s serenading everyone in the mess about his Rite. “I imagine the entire ship will soon know every last gory detail of how he became a true krogan.” She glances at her datapad. “But I don’t recommend headbutting krogan again, Commander, or getting in the way of one at a full charge. Your cybernetics won’t protect you from everything.”

Kaidan looks at Shepard sharply. Shepard shakes his head and mutters, “We’ll talk later.”

Which he does after Chakwas finally dismisses them from her bay. Kaidan follows him to the cabin and perches on the couch’s armrest, watching Shepard pace and waiting for him to say something.

“Shepard,” Kaidan prompts when it becomes clear the commander isn’t going to start.

Shepard sighs and glances up at the stars through the thick glass panel. “Cerberus used cybernetics to rebuild me.” He raises a hand to his face, fingers tracing the faint glowing scars crawling up his cheek. “Means I can upgrade myself with synthetic weaves. I can hit harder, withstand more damage, recover faster. And before you say anything, I _know_. But I can take a hit from an angry krogan better than your tech armor can.”

“That’s what my barrier field is for.”

“You had your back to him,” Shepard says like that’s an excuse, like he forgot Kaidan is a ranking Alliance officer.

“You still used that launcher on the thresher maw,” Kaidan says.

“I’m reckless, not stupid.”

“Well,” he says with a tight smile. “At least you admit it.”

He leaves without another word, shouldering Shepard aside while walking out. In the elevator, he slumps against the wall, digging fingertips into his temple like they’ll dissipate his frustration.

“Destination, Mr. Alenko?” EDI asks.

“Third deck,” he mutters. “I need a drink.”

“Very well.”

* * *

“Approaching Nos Astra,” Joker announces. “Please don’t bring any more dangerous people onto this ship. My heart can’t take it.”

“Thane apologized,” Shepard says. “It wasn’t his intention.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just because you have a private bathroom and don’t have to worry about assassins standing in corners scaring the shit out of you. Literally.”

“Way too much information, Joker.”

While the ship docks, Kaidan goes to the armory to retrieve his pistol. Taylor looks up while reviewing a list of requisitions. “Where are you going?”

“Seeing an old friend,” he replies. “And since she’s after the Shadow Broker, better to be safe than sorry.”

The message came thirty-two hours ago. He shouldn’t be surprised Liara knows when they’re arriving or what on Illium has Lawson’s attention.

_“It’s Shepard’s team that needs to have its head on straight.”_

_“What about you?”_

_“That’s my business.”_

And now it’s Shepard’s. Lawson waits at the airlock, tapping her foot impatiently while the ship docks. She exchanges a few words with Taylor before calling Shepard over. Kaidan checks his omni-tool and misses the look Shepard gives him before following the two Cerberus officers off the ship.

Ten minutes later, Kaidan enters Liara’s office to find her chatting with Anderson via vid comm. She greets him with an embrace but doesn’t leave the room while he turns to the councilor’s holo.

 _“Alenko,”_ Anderson says. _“Got an update for me?”_

“Where you do you want me to start?”

He summaries the run-in with the Collector cruiser and EDI’s discovery, though he doesn’t say that she’s an AI. Anderson spends most of the briefing nodding and humming thoughtfully, asking for clarification here and there.

Afterwards, he shakes his head. _“The Illusive Man sure knows how to gamble. He’s lucky his instincts paid off so far. But the galactic core… you’re sure about this?”_

“Yes, sir. Only way to stop the Collectors for good is to go there to destroy their base.”

_“I see.”_

“Whatever they’re doing, it’s to help the Reapers,” Liara adds. “Stopping the Collectors should give us time to prepare for the inevitable.”

 _“I wish that was the case. The Council prefers to keep denying it until they’re blue in the face.”_ Anderson pauses. _“No offense, T’Soni. Right now, Shepard’s credibility is shot. You know how many requests Admiral Hackett turned down asking to apprehend him?”_

“Too many,” Liara replies promptly.

 _“I’m not going to ask how you know,”_ Anderson says dryly. _“Council isn’t going to help him and neither is the Alliance. Whatever Cerberus gives him will have to carry him to the Collector base. Alenko, are you planning to stay with Shepard all the way to the end?”_

“I am.”

Anderson nods solemnly. _“Been recording this and our last conversation just in case. If neither of you return, I’m putting them forward as proof of what’s going on and what you’ve been doing. Good luck.”_

Anderson ends the call. Liara exhales slowly and returns to her desk. “I had my suspicions but never did I imagine…. No wonder nobody knew where they were coming from.” She glances at her terminal. “Since he tried to sell Shepard’s body to them, I’ve been keeping the Shadow Broker busy so that he doesn’t interfere on their behalf.”

“Thank you.”

“Anything to help since I can’t be there myself,” Liara says. She glances at the display again. “Eclipse activity at one of the cargo terminals. Shepard?”

“Probably.”

“Why aren’t you with him?”

Kaidan shrugs and finally takes a seat across from her. “Lawson couldn’t wait and you did want to see me.”

“Fair enough.” Her eyes search his. “There’s something else.”

There’s no use hiding from her, is there? He sighs and leans forward, elbows on his knees, wondering how to explain it. “You remember what it was like chasing Saren across half the galaxy. Remember all the times we had to pull Shepard out of danger because he got too far ahead?”

She smiles fondly. “I do.”

“I thought it came with his training. Vanguards, you know? But now, he’s… Cerberus used cybernetic implants on him. _He can upgrade himself_. That’s what he told me. Six days ago, he put himself between me and a charging krogan. He just shrugged it off, like he didn’t care if he got hurt or not.”

“You think he’ll get himself killed.”

He sighs heavily. “I doubt Cerberus considered the consequences of _being dead for two years_ when they brought him back. I watched him die, Liara. I can’t - I’m not going through that again just because he won’t take care of himself.”

“Then talk to him. Isn’t that what friends do?”

Kaidan huffs a laugh. “You’d think it’s that simple but… you felt it too, didn’t you? Like there’s this wall and you don’t know how to get around it. You don’t know what to say. How to say it. How he’ll respond.”

“It wasn’t two years for him, Kaidan. He’ll never know what it was like,” Liara says. “But I’m not you. I think he’ll listen to you.”

His throat tightens and he swallows hard against it, ending up sounding hoarser than he meant to. “I guess I’ll try. Thanks, Liara.”

“Anything for a friend. Now,” she says, folding her arms on her desk and giving him a very different look. “You said in your reply that you wanted my help?”

What was that old saying? A “Hail Mary”? “We might not come back from this so everyone’s trying to wrap up unfinished business. There’s… something I always wanted to do and I thought now’s better than never.”

“What do you need?”

“I’m looking for someone. Her name’s Rahna.”


	8. Rahna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _might_ do a third update this week to make up for how little I did last week and to prepare for a possibly hectic next week. 
> 
> Two things:
> 
>   * I couldn't dig up any new information on Rahna nor did I read the issue about Kaidan's time in BAaT so I'm flying with only the information from the ME wiki. Considering how I wrote this, maybe my fretting ultimately won't matter. 
>   * There's a trope I personally don't like but thought would be hilarious and fitting to use in this chapter. But mostly I blame Captain America: The Winter Soldier for selling me on why and how to use it.
> 


“... get that looked at.”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t _look_ fine, Commander.”

Kaidan and Joker glance at each other; Joker shrugs while he sighs and turns around to see Lawson and Taylor trying to convince Shepard to-

“What happened?” he asks, leaving the cockpit to get a better look at the damage.

“Had a fight with Eclipse mercs,” Shepard says evasively. His armor is missing _pieces_ and the bruises on his face aren’t fading. “They lost. Miranda’s sister and her family are safe, which is the important thing.”

“Eclipse captain didn’t go down easy,” Taylor says, washing his hands of the inevitable by leaving for the armory. “Shepard did himself no favors with that stunt of his.”

“But I appreciate the help,” Lawson says, looking at the commander gratefully. It’s a rare look and it vanishes as soon as it appears. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, Miranda.”

She follows Taylor, leaving Kaidan with Shepard and a nosy bridge crew.

“What’s he talking about?” Kaidan asks suspiciously.

“Cargo terminal was full of mercs, mechs, and fuel canisters. Tried to throw one at the mercs with a field but I missed and it... ricocheted. Into my face.”

Someone hastily stifles their snort of laughter.

Kaidan stares at him, then at the scorch marks on his broken armor, and then back at him . “Then shouldn’t you be at the medical bay?”

Shepard immediately raises his hand to a particularly large purple splotch on his right jaw. “Everything’s healing. Just give it time and I’ll be good as new. Don’t worry about me-”

“No, I think Chakwas should take a look,” Kaidan says and now even Joker’s watching. “You look like hell.”

Shepard backs away but he grabs the commander’s arm. Shepard flinches but goes still. “All right. Medical it is.”

Every pair of eyes on the deck follows them to the elevator. Halfway down to the third deck, Kaidan realizes he’s still holding Shepard’s arm but the commander doesn’t pull away. He’s quiet, head bowed, listing to the side as though battle fatigue finally caught up with him. 

The third deck goes quiet when Kaidan pushes Shepard out of the elevator towards the medical bay. Chakwas spots them through the window and rises to meet them. Figuring Shepard can handle things from here, Kaidan lets him go. The commander takes another step before turning around with a wry smile. 

“Thought I was in charge,” Shepard says casually.

“Not when you’re not taking care of yourself, Commander,” Kaidan replies pointedly. “Find me later. I need to ask you something.”

He waits by the window on the starboard observation deck, watching Illium shrink into the starry black. Samara isn’t meditating for once; she sits in a chair next to the ship’s library, browsing its small collection with the occasional thoughtful hum.

When Shepard walks in some twenty minutes later, she rises. “If you need me, I’ll be in the port observation deck.”

Shepard saunters over to the window and leans against it, looking out at the stars. “She asked for this deck to get some peace and quiet. We could take this up to my cabin.”

“I’d rather not,” Kaidan replies, watching Shepard’s reflection watch him. “This won’t take long.”

Shepard folds his arms. He hasn’t shed his broken armor yet but doesn’t seem aware of it. “What is it?”

“I met with Liara while you were helping Lawson. Remember what I told you about Brain Camp?”

“I do.” Then, “Is this about Rahna?”

Kaidan huffs and shakes his head. “Can’t believe you still remember that. I never got a chance to talk to her after what happened with Commander Vyrnnus and if I don’t do something now, it’ll stay that way.”

“You sure she’s alive? Or that she’ll want to see you?”

“That’s why I asked Liara. If Rahna’s dead, then that’s that. If she’s alive… I always wanted to tell her I’m sorry for what happened. But if she doesn’t want to see me, I’ll let it go.”

Shepard nods slowly. “Did Liara find her yet?”

“She’ll tell me when she has something.”

Another nod. “Keep me posted.”

Shepard raises his hand but hesitates, drops it to his side, and leaves without another word. Kaidan presses his forehead to the cool glass, wishing the aborted gesture didn’t hurt so much.

* * *

The Normandy has time on its hands for once and the ship decides to use it by investigating the mystery behind Neith’s crashed freighter and its dangerous cargo. The information EDI pulled from the shipping manifest pointed to the Jarrahe Station in the Strabo System as the MSV Corsica’s last recorded location.

“The station is in lockdown,” EDI announced, “and scans show no signs of movement, organic or synthetic.”

Kaidan still grabs a pistol and rifle from the armory. Shepard and Tali are already at the airlock, conversing quietly. Going by Tali’s open omni-tool. he assumes it’s about the station’s blueprint.

“... what I mean,” she says.

“Have I ever given a questionable order? Wait, don’t answer that.”

“I’m not just talking about you. Name me a ship and crew that-” Tali’s helmeted head turns to Kaidan. “There you are.”

“Seven minutes until we dock,” Shepard says and points to the helmet under his arm. “Life support system’s offline and the station has multiple breaches so don’t take it off.”

The station is dark and silent save for the ship’s lights shining through the cracked windows and the boarding crew entering the docking area. The door shuts behind them and Tali says, “We’re locked in.”

The airlock flashes red despite Kaidan and Tali’s best efforts. After three minutes, she says, “We need to restore power to the docking area in order to unlock it.”

“All right. Let’s keep moving,” Shepard says and they continue their cautious pace down the hall.

They discover the gruesome fate of Jarrahe’s crew around the corner, bodies littering the floor and staining the walls. EDI reassures them that they’re the only ones on the station, not that it stops them from twitching at every shadow cast by the ship’s lights.

“If the mechs did this, where are they?” Kaidan wonders.

“The Corsica crashed _after_ leaving Jarrahe,” Shepard says and enters the processing room. “Whatever happened here didn’t involve mechs.”

“It might be the station’s VI,” Tali says and turns the power on. A synthetic voice immediately asks intruders to report to the dock for removal. “Definitely the VI.”

The control hub in the next room is impenetrable and Tali shakes her head after trying to hack in. “It thinks we’re intruders. Restoring power to the rest of the station might do the trick.”

Kaidan picks up a datapad next to a body. “Looks like they tried to shut it down but the VI got to them first. Rest of the data’s corrupted, though.”

“Upload everything in there to EDI,” Shepard says and heads to the living quarters.

Despite the station VI’s best efforts, they restore power to the living quarters and the research labs. The control hub remains sealed, however, so Tali suggests heading into engineering to force the doors to unlock. She takes two steps onto the walkway and then Shepard hauls her back when a vent blasts heat into the corridor.

“Plasma venting in progress,” the VI declares because it _really_ wants the intruders dead.

“Keelah, that was close,” Tali says. “Thanks, Shepard.”

“Now what?” Kaidan asks, watching the jets go off in sequence down the corridor.

“Simple. I do this carefully and hope my shields hold,” the quarian says while making modifications with a few quick taps on her omni-tool.

“I can do that,” Kaidan says. 

“I volunteered,” Tali replies. “If you hear me screaming, come find me.”

Shepard shakes his head. “You’re not going in there by yourself.”

“ _You_ are going to stay back and wait for me,” she says. “It’ll only be a few minutes. _Use them_.”

She pats his arm and reenters the walkway, waiting for the nearest vents to close before sprinting to safety between the jets.

“Use them for what?” Kaidan wonders.

Shepard sighs while crossing his arms and rocking on his feet. “Use them to apologize. To you.”

“For what, exactly?” Kaidan asks slowly.

Shepard leans against the wall, head tilted to the floor. “Those two years… I don’t know what that’s like. One minute I’m blacking out, next minute I’m waking up on an operating table on a Cerberus station. I had no idea how long I was gone until Jacob told me but I couldn’t believe him. Outside that station? He wasn’t lying, but sometimes I still don’t believe him.”

The conversation is too heavy for an abandoned research station run by a murderous VI but they’ll never have it on the Normandy, where eyes and ears watch and listen anywhere and everywhere. 

“I guess the problem is that I didn’t change and you did. I’m sorry for not realizing it sooner,” Shepard admits. “No such thing as ‘just like old times’. If you don’t want to do this anymore, I won’t hold it against you-”

Kaidan shakes his head. “I just want you to take care of yourself, Shepard. Just because Cerberus brought you back to fight the Reapers doesn’t mean that’s all you’re good for, and I wish you’d realize that.”

He hears Shepard smile through the comm link. “Could’ve used that the first week back. Jacob was more considerate than Miranda… but he’s not you. Thanks. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Kaidan should say something but unformed words lodge in his throat. Something hangs in limbo, that crawling suffocating silence he doesn’t miss, and he swallows thickly before saying, “Anytime, Shepard.”

Tension keeps him quiet, tongue-tied like in the days before their fateful scouting mission to Alchera, and he breathes a sigh of relief when the floor thrums with the station’s systems coming online. Tali returns to them at a more leisurely pace now that the vents aren’t trying to roast her and tells them that Jarrahe Station is back at full power.

They return to the control hub and Tali shuts down the VI before activating the station’s SOS protocols. She steps back, satisfied with her handiwork, and says, “Docking bay should be working properly now.”

“Good work,” Shepard says. “Let’s get out of here.”

An hour after leaving the station, Kaidan checks his inbox on one of the terminals in the crew quarters. He scrubs at his damp hair while ignoring yet another message from one of his superiors demanding he report himself to the nearest Alliance outpost and deletes spam until he finds a message from an unknown sender. He clicks on it warily and his heart starts pounding when he reads its contents.

_Rahna is alive and on Elysium. What do you want to do? -- L_

* * *

“Kasumi’s coming with us,” Shepard says when Kaidan climbs into the Kodiak. “If anyone knows how to sneak into one of our colonies, it’s her.”

“Is that really necessary?”

“I’m working with Cerberus and you’re wanted for dereliction of duty, remember?”

While the Alliance admits nothing, they tightened security for their colony planets. Elysium in particular saw their patrols and security protocols step up after the first colony attacks, though Goto says she only needs to scramble the sensors that could track the Kodiak until it landed. When Kaidan points out that anyone can see them through a window, she quips that nobody does that anymore. 

She’s the only one of the three wearing their gear. Shepard looks strangely small in civvies, never mind how exposed Kaidan feels without his armor and shields.

“Relax, boys,” Goto says while tinkering with her omni-tool. “No Skyllian Blitz planned for today.”

“Pressley was there, wasn’t he?” Shepard muses.

“Heard you’re the one who took out Elanos Haliat,” she says because she would know. “Good riddance.”

Kaidan shudders at the memory. Shepard had gone planetside with Ashley and Tali to deactivate the Alliance probe only to discover the Blitz’s mastermind was already there, trying to salvage his reputation by killing the first human Spectre with it. Kaidan couldn’t pry himself away from the cockpit until Shepard signaled for pickup, much to Joker’s annoyance.

The Kodiak shudders upon entry and Goto taps on her omni-tool. “There. They don’t know we’re here.”

Kaidan stares out the window at the Grissom Academy orbiting the planet. Liara’s second email provided more details on Rahna, including her marriage and work on the Ascension Project. She never visited the station, and who could blame her?

The shuttle skirts around the GARDIAN towers placed along the perimeter of Rahna’s neighborhood and settles within the dense greenery. Goto keeps her omni-tool open while they walk to the colony.

“Nothing specific about Shepard but they have you flagged,” she tells Kaidan. “Who knew drunk-dialing people could get you into so much trouble.”

He sighs heavily while Shepard stifles laughter. “I had a respectable record before you came along.”

“You did help me stop a rogue Spectre from killing the Council and bringing the Reapers back,” Shepard says. “Any suggestions, Kasumi?”

“I have a route. It’s not complicated but you need to keep a low profile. I can tell you when and where to move. Luckily, her block isn’t far so the risk is minimal. But we shouldn’t stay long. The last thing we need is the shuttle getting impounded.” A beat. “On second thought-”

“No,” Shepard says.

“So boring,” she says and activates her tactical cloak. Seconds later, her voice comes through their earpieces. _“There’s a checkpoint up ahead. I’ll tell you when….”_

This part of Elysium consists mainly of apartments, markets, skycar lots, and a barracks. Security is lighter than expected, but that doesn’t change how much Kaidan and Shepard don’t look like locals. No matter how inconspicuously he acts, Kaidan feels their eyes following him up and down the streets.

 _“Loosen up, Alenko,”_ Goto teases. _“Also, cameras and a two-man patrol up ahead. Turn right at the alley.”_

Eventually, they find Rahna’s apartment. Goto decloaks next to Kaidan and cocks her head while assessing the building. “Nice digs. I’ll keep watch, warn you if some neighbor’s getting too nosy or recognizes Shepard.”

“Good idea,” Shepard says. After she vanishes, he asks, “How do you want to do this?”

“I’ll take it from here,” Kaidan says softly. Memories surface - isolation on a sterile station, nighttime commiseration with fellow biotics, the crackle of barely-contained dark energy, Commander Vyrnnus lashing out at-

“Kaidan.”

He shakes his head and waves Shepard off. “Just… wait out front. Don’t blow anything up.”

“I make no promises. Good luck.”

He climbs every step to the building like the old Mako crawling up the mountainside. Nerves rattle but he won’t show them now, not when he’s finally at her doorstep after so many years. He drags a hand through his hair, squares his shoulders, and knocks on her door.

The woman who answers the door is older - of course she’s older; they’re all older now - but he’d recognize her anywhere. The same is true of her; her curious confusion turns to shock and recognition in the blink of an eye.

“Kaidan?” she says.

He smiles. “Hey, Rahna.”

* * *

Shepard doesn’t ask him how the thirty minutes went. He’s grateful for that.

_“I can’t stand stations,” she admitted, looking out the window at the sky. “But I couldn’t walk away. I needed to make sure none of it happened again.”_

_“Yeah.” Kaidan stared at the mug in front of him, thinking about a few of the biotic soldiers he worked with. “Good thing they have you around.”_

_“I had to try.” Rahna watched Shepard loitering on the sidewalk. “So, is he…?”_

_“He is.”_

_“And a vanguard, right? Imagine that - the first human Spectre, a biotic. That probably never crossed their minds.”_

_“To be fair, they had a lot going on at the time,” Kaidan said. “Like making sure we could control ourselves without hurting each other or tearing the station apart.” He laughed quietly, shaking his head. “We’ve come a long way.”_

_She turned to him with a familiar kind smile, tempered by age and time. “We did, didn’t we?”_

It was… good to see her again. She doesn’t bring up the incident that ultimately closed BAaT and he realizes that neither of them had to. What was done was done - they were young and at the mercy of a humanity stumbling its way into a place within a larger galactic community. Mistakes were made but they learned and tried to do better since, and isn’t that what matters? It’s better to let these sleeping dogs lie.

 _“Uh oh,”_ Goto suddenly says. _“Another patrol coming your way. Duck into the store on your left and go to the back… okay, all clear.”_

“Any reason why they’re increasing patrols?” Shepard asks while pulling his jacket’s hood over his head.

_“Hmm.... looks like there was activity at the edge of the Petra Nebula a couple weeks ago. Probably batarian. Maybe there really is going to be a Skyllian Blitz redux.”_

“Kasumi.”

_“Right. Patrol on your right. Cross the street now and cut through the skycar lot….”_

They run into an increasing number of close calls trying to escape the colony undetected and it’s not just the patrols; their evasive maneuvers are attracting unwanted attention from the justifiably nervous locals.

_“Just blocked someone’s call to security. Try acting natural. You’re almost there and - oh no.”_

“What’s wrong?” Kaidan asks.

_“Two patrols about to cross paths where you are in thirty seconds and none of the stores are crowded enough to hide you from them or the cameras.”_

“And there’s nowhere to hide,” Kaidan says. “They’ll see us.”

 _“I know, I know, give me a second - shoot, don’t have enough time for that… I have an idea. Did it with Keiji before, works like a charm,”_ Goto says and Kaidan worries at the glee in her voice. _“Pretend you’re making out.”_

“I’m sorry?” Shepard asks incredulously, earning sharp glances from two passerbys. 

_“Shhh! Not so loud. Think about it - do you really think they want to look closely at two people canoodling on a street corner? I wouldn’t, unless they’re really hot - the point is, they won’t. They don’t want to; it makes them uncomfortable. Fifteen seconds.”_

In a perfect world, Kaidan would not be on the run from the Alliance and he certainly would not be considering a master thief’s suggestion that sounds like something ripped straight from an old Earth vid. But he won’t let his presence lead the Alliance to Rahna’s doorstep and no one can afford to have Shepard be held up for days, if not weeks, to answer for his two-year absence.

Shepard hasn’t said anything else, presumably still dumbfounded by Goto’s suggestion, so Kaidan makes the decision for them.

“Shepard,” he says quietly, insistently. “Look at me.”

Something in his chest twists uncomfortably when Shepard looks up with a vaguely panicked expression. Goto warns them that they have just seconds so he backs Shepard into the side of a building and leans in. “Wrap your arms around me. They can’t see my face.”

Shepard does so, shielding Kaidan from prying eyes, and they wait for their path to clear.

Kaidan barely hears Goto tracking the patrols’ movements. Shepard’s eyes are on him, pupils wide and dark, and fingers curl at the base of his head where the L2 implants sit. He shudders, breath hitching at the silvery tremor down his spine, and sways closer into Shepard’s space. His gaze falls to Shepard’s mouth and he wonders - traitorously, hopelessly - what it feels like. What it tastes like.

 _“O-kay, Alenko, maybe tone it down a bit before someone reports you for misuse of biotics,”_ Goto suddenly says.

He realizes he’s glowing faintly with dark energy and that several pedestrians are staring. He pulls away and staggers back, running a shaking hand through his hair. “We should - we need to go.”

_“Totally agree. Hello, Commander? You with us?”_

Shepard nods, then clears his throat and says, “Yeah, let’s go.”

They don’t talk or look at each other while Goto guides them past the checkpoint to the outskirts of the Elysium neighborhood. She decloaks next to Kaidan at the shuttle and tinkers with her omni-tool while Shepard goes into the cockpit to alert the Normandy. He doesn’t come back out, leaving Kaidan with the master thief.

She doesn’t say anything for a long time. Once she’s satisfied that the Kodiak’s departure didn’t alert Elysium’s security, she closes her omni-tool display and looks at Kaidan.

“Don’t worry,” she says wryly. “I won’t say a word.”

He shouldn’t trust a thief but he’s too rattled to do more than nod.

“Besides,” she says, settling back in her seat and watching the Normandy loom into view, “I already have a copy of that vid you told EDI to get rid of. Way more interesting.”

Kaidan laughs brokenly into his hands and doesn’t lift his head until the Kodiak lands in the hangar bay.


	9. The Citadel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just thought it would be interesting to write a scenario with a squad sans Shepard and Kaidan putting those two years to good use.

The Normandy is in the midst of a swing shift when scanners find a powerful communications relay on Tarith in the Lusarn System. Once EDI determines its protocols match the Blood Pack’s, Shepard summons Massani, Solus, and Krios to the fifth deck. 

Kaidan leaves the showers to see Tali sitting in the mess, browsing aimlessly on her datapad. Curious, he sits down across from her and she yelps.

“Sorry. Wasn’t expecting anyone to be awake right now,” she says, picking up her dropped datapad. “Can’t sleep? … you took a shower?”

“Felt like it,” he says, raking fingers through his damp hair. They brush over his implants and he shudders at the memory of Shepard’s fingers curling against them and the heat now coiling tightly in his chest. The cold shower did nothing after all.

“Are you okay? You don’t look well,” she says slowly.

“I’m fine.” He rubs his flushed face, forcing the thoughts out of his head. “What about you? Why are you up?”

“Oh, I’m just browsing the extranet for dextro-friendly recipes. I appreciate Gardner’s efforts but what he makes for me and Garrus is a little,” and she looks around before leaning in and loudly whispers, “bland.”

He laughs lowly. “I won’t say a word.”

Tali sits back and fiddles with her omni-tool. “I’m a little worried about my father. He hasn’t replied to my last message in ten days. If he’s too busy with his experiments, I understand, but I don’t like the silence.”

“What is he doing?”

She shrugs and resumes browsing on her datapad. “He won’t say but it’s geth-related. I’ve been sending him deactivated geth parts for a-”

“Seriously? Is that safe?”

“Of course. I make sure of it,” she replies. “I wouldn’t send anything dangerous back to the Fleet.” She tilts her head and then taps decisively on the datapad. “Maybe I’ll ask Auntie Raan….”

Kaidan fishes a broken protein bar out of his pocket while she taps out a quick message. Two rumpled-looking crewman wander by and Lawson exits her office to grab something from the kitchen. She pays them no attention, thankfully; he doesn’t need her picking him apart with a glance.

“... Kaidan.” Something pokes his arm and he looks down at Tali’s finger. “You’ve been quiet since Elysium. What happened?”

He doesn’t fidget but his face warms again and he looks away from her helmeted head. “Met someone I hadn’t seen in years. We were part of humanity’s first biotic school for kids. It didn’t end well.”

“Why? What happened?”

“They hired turian biotic mercenaries to train us. Looking back, they were just asking for trouble. Human-turian relations were terrible back then, and mercenaries?” His smile is grim. “I helped close that school. The instructor broke my friend’s arm for grabbing a glass of water instead of using her biotics. We fought. He gave me a scar and I broke his neck.”

“That’s terrible. I’m sorry you and your friend had to go through that.”

Kaidan shrugs. “It’s been decades and we both moved on. I just thought now would be a good time to find her.”

“I know what you mean. So how did it go?”

“Better than I expected. We talked about what she did after the school closed. Now she works with Grissom Academy to teach biotic kids.” He remembers vividly her wistful stare out the window at the sky. “You know, she never asked how and why I found her. I think she knew something was up but decided not to push until I said something.”

Tali’s head tilts thoughtfully. “Sounds like you were close.”

“BAaT separated us from our parents. Bunch of lonely kids on a space station? We looked out for each other, tried to made sure everybody survived. If things didn’t end the way they did, then maybe….” He did wonder but in fits and bursts; he never had much time to linger on the what-ifs. And after a while, it became the safer thing to do. “It was closure.”

“But something else is bothering you.”

He swallows and looks elsewhere. She can’t know what else happened down there or what’s been plaguing his sleep ever since. “I wouldn’t have gone looking for her if I wasn’t on this mission. It’s nothing like when we ran off to Ilos.”

“Nobody knew what to expect,” Tali says. “Garrus says he doesn't like knowing what we’re up against. Makes him pessimistic about our odds.”

He laughs while balling up the wrapper. “He’s not wrong but if anyone can pull it off, it’s Shepard.” He considers Tali for a moment and then says, “So, on Jarrahe Station-”

“Oh, Shepard came down to engineering, being all ‘moody’ and getting weird looks from Gabby and Kenneth. He said you were angry with him and once he told me why, I gave him a piece of my mind.”

Kaidan shakes his head. “Remind me to never get on your bad side.”

“That’s a good idea. Garrus tried to remind me of those conversations we used to have back at the Citadel but stopped once I waved my shotgun in his face.”

“Poor man.”

* * *

“Okay.” Shepard sits on the mess table, foot on a chair, glancing between Garrus and Krios. “So they’re both on the Citadel at the same time. What are the odds?”

“Don’t forget the party our friend Donovan is hosting in six days,” Goto says, materializing next to Kaidan and startling a crewman. She sees his raised eyebrow and leans in to whisper, “Cerberus told me I’d have help with a heist. This is me collecting.”

He nods because of course.

After some thought, Shepard says, “I’ll ask Captain Bailey if he heard anything about a drell and Fade, and then we’ll go from there. After that,” and he looks at Goto, “we’re robbing an arms dealer.”

His eyes meet Kaidan’s and skitter away; there’s a slight hitch in his voice as he keeps talking. Unnerved, Kaidan leaves the impromptu meeting and stays on the starboard observation deck, staring at the stars.

After the Normandy enters Citadel space, EDI’s hologram appears on the platform next to Kaidan. He flinches away from the bright blue flash and swears while rubbing the back of his neck.

“Mr. Alenko. C-Sec has flagged your credentials. If you attempt to enter the Citadel, they will apprehend you,” she says. “Shepard and Miranda have already been notified.”

“You told her?”

“I am required to do so. Shepard requests your presence on Deck 2.”

Shepard looks over his shoulder when Kaidan exits the elevator. He minimizes his terminal’s display and leans against the CIC, watching Chambers work at her station. “EDI told you?”

“She did. Now what?”

“Stay on the ship until we leave. Might be on good terms with Bailey but he can’t keep pulling strings without someone noticing.” Shepard hesitates. “If I knew the Alliance was going to react like this, I wouldn’t have-.”

“It’s fine, Shepard,” Kaidan says and walks past him to the cockpit. “Don’t worry about me.”

Three hours after the Normandy docks, Shepard and Garrus return. Kaidan is still in the cockpit, keeping Joker company while ignoring the pressure building in the right side of his head. He looks over his shoulder when the airlock opens. “Where’s Krios?”

“He’s arranging something with Bailey. Briefing room?”

Curious, Kaidan climbs out of his seat to follow Shepard and Garrus to the back of the second deck. Once the door shuts behind them, Garrus turns on the commander. “I’m not waiting a minute longer, Shepard. I already waited _months_ for this and I’m not letting him get away again.”

“I know but think about what you-”

Garrus stalks around the conference table. “Don’t patronize me. You know what he did to my men. You know he has to pay.”

“Is this about Omega?” Kaidan asks, trying to catch up.

Garrus nods. “Put feelers out months ago and finally found something.” He taps subconsciously on the part of the visor where he carved in several names. “Sidonis is hiding on the Citadel with Harkin’s help, of all people.”

That’s a name he hasn’t heard in years. “Wasn’t he C-Sec?”

Garrus laughs darkly. “Not anymore.”

“Thane’s son is the problem,” Shepard says. “One of Thane’s former contacts says Kolyat took a contract with an Elias Kelham. C-Sec is bringing him in for questioning.”

“What if he says nothing?” Kaidan asks.

“He’ll talk,” Shepard replies casually and even Garrus eyes him suspiciously.

“Okay. So why am I here?”

“Was thinking we split up,” Shepard says. “You can’t be near C-Sec so you’ll go with Garrus to find Harkin while Thane and I get answers from Kelham and stop Kolyat.”

Garrus cocks his head. “That’s… a good idea. But what about security?”

“Kasumi. Already asked. She can get you inside Zakera but isn’t sticking around; still working out the details of her heist. Anyone else you want with you?”

“Tali,” Garrus says immediately. “I don’t trust anybody else for this. It’s too personal.”

“Understood. So, that’s the plan.” Shepard’s omni-tool alerts him to a new message. “They’re bringing Kelham in. And Garrus? I know how much you want payback but ask yourself if killing him is worth it. And, uh, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

Kaidan glances at Garrus after Shepard leaves. “I guess the real question is, what hasn’t he done?”

“Beats me,” Garrus replies and taps on his omni-tool. “Tali? Meet us at the airlock on Deck 2. I’ll explain everything.”

* * *

The migraine worsens as they crawl through the warehouse in Zakera’s underbelly, shooting down the Blue Suns and mechs standing between them and Harkin. Kaidan tells himself to ride it out until they return to the Normandy, and the prospect of holing up in a dark quiet corner keeps him moving forward.

Garrus is relentless, shrugging off every bullet and hacking attempt while knocking off Suns and LOKIs left and right. The mercs quickly concentrate their fire on him, exposing themselves to Kaidan’s biotics and Tali’s combat drones. They make a frighteningly efficient team. 

The only hitch comes when Harkin activates two YMIR units They scatter for cover while Tali’s drone distracts the mechs and get into position.

“You bosh’tet,” Tali mutters while trying to hack the closer YMIR. Kaidan overloads its systems to create the opening she needs. “There we go. Now go get the other guy.”

The two YMIRs attack each other until the hacked mech finally breaks down and explodes; Kaidan throws up a barrier field, shielding others from the hot debris. The remaining YMIR turns its cannons on Kaidan and he pushes the barrier at it, knocking it off-balance. Garrus destroys it with a concussive blast.

“And stay down,” Garrus says. “Come on; Harkin’s just up ahead.”

Kaidan stumbles while following Garrus and Tali up the raised platforms to Harkin’s office. Bright flashing spots dance in his vision and bile presses at the back of his throat; his head is on the verge of splitting open and he wishes it does so.

“Kaidan?” Tali calls out from the upper level.

“I’m fine,” he says and hauls himself up a platform. “Don’t do anything Shepard wouldn’t do, Garrus.”

He still has to wrestle Garrus’s rifle away from Harkin’s kneecap. Annoyed with Kaidan, the absent commander, or himself, Garrus headbutts Harkin instead before stalking out of the warehouse.

“Someone needs to lure Sidonis out into the open,” Garrus says while taking their rented skycar to a spot above the rendezvous point in the Orbital Lounge. “Tali?”

“I don’t know. Sidonis might not believe Harkin uses quarians. And what if you shoot him and people notice? C-Sec will arrest me.”

“She’s right. They won’t think twice about blaming a quarian,” Kaidan says while digging fingertips into his right temple. “I’ll do it.”

“You don’t look good,” Garrus says. “Maybe you should stay back-”

“I’m fine. Just tell me what you want me to do.”

“He’s right,” Tali says. “You look really pale. Paler than usual, anyway.”

“I doubt Sidonis will notice,” Kaidan grits out.

He’s right. Sidonis barely pays attention to him, constantly looking around the Orbital Lounge for imagined threats while being unaware of the very real one is hiding above him. Garrus talks in Kaidan’s ear, demanding he move out of the way, but he can’t. The turian standing in front of him is haunted and haggard, a dead man walking; killing him would bring justice to no one. When Sidonis tries to bolt, Kaidan grabs his arm and warns him not to move.

“Right now, I’m the only reason why you’re still standing,” he tells Sidonis. “Garrus, you’re not going to find what you’re looking for by shooting a dead man. Let him go.”

Garrus eventually reluctantly gives his word and Kaidan lets Sidonis walk away. Then Tali warns him of two nearby C-Sec officers eyeballing him, and Kaidan retreats to their location.

“Why?” Garrus demands while brusquely disassembling his sniper rifle. Kaidan flinches away from the ringing sounds. “Why didn’t you let me shoot him?”

“You know me. You really think I’d let you take that shot?”

Garrus freezes. “That’s why Shepard asked you.”

“We all know you weren’t taking just anyone with you to find Sidonis. I’m your friend. I’m supposed to make you give me a good reason for stepping aside so you can have your shot.”

“What, revenge wasn’t enough? What he did to me and the rest of my team wasn’t it?”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Kaidan says. “It was his, and he’s been paying for it ever since. You’ve done more than enough for your team, Garrus. Isn’t that enough? For you and for him?”

Garrus blinks slowly at him and then sighs, shoulders slumping. “Two wrongs don’t make a right but I still don’t like it. It was all so simple in my head.”

“Nothing’s ever that simple,” Kaidan replies and climbs into the skycar. He presses up against the side, looking for the darkest corner while Garrus takes it back to the docking bay. He presses fingertips to his temples and tries to focus on the quiet hum of Tali’s enviro-suit.

Minutes pass and then Garrus quietly says, “Thank you.”

* * *

Nowhere on the Normandy is quiet enough or dark enough; the ship is too bright, too loud, too active. Jack’s chosen corner in engineering’s sub-deck sees the least traffic but it’s _Jack_ , so he settles for the starboard observation deck.

“Are you well?” Samara asks, watching him curl up on the couch with his back to the window.

“Migraine,” he says, voice muffled by the crook of his arm. “If you know anything about human-manufactured bio-amps-”

“Only a little.”

“I use an older model. Makes me more powerful than most human biotics but I get migraines as a side effect, and I’m one of the lucky ones.”

“I see. Perhaps you should see Doctor Chakwas about it,” Samara says.

“She knows. There’s not much she can do. I just have to ride this out.” He squeezes his eyes shut, curls into an even tighter ball, and tries to sleep it off.

When Shepard and Krios return hours later, he’s still awake and regretting using his biotics so extensively at the warehouse. He’s usually better about taking care of himself but he hasn’t been at his best lately.

He tenses when the door opens and then when someone touches his shoulder.

“Come on,” Shepard says quietly. “My cabin’s better for this sort of thing.”

He can’t protest. Slowly, he unfolds himself and lets Shepard guide him to the dimmed elevator. He bows his head, digging fingertips into his temples like they’ll stop the relentless agonizing pressure. Shepard’s hand stays on his shoulder, thumb rubbing circles into tense muscle, and he tries to focus on the small, steadying motion instead.

“Thought migraines came with warning signs,” Shepard says. “Would’ve found someone else to go with Garrus if you said something.”

“Garrus wasn’t taking anybody else and you know it,” Kaidan replies hoarsely.

Once the elevator stops, Shepard pushes him into the cabin and says, “Dim the lights, EDI. Fish tank, too.”

Kaidan stumbles into the bathroom to wash his face and steps back out into blessed darkness and EDI saying the commander’s quarters are mostly soundproof.

“So I wouldn’t know if someone blew a hole in the ship?” Shepard asks while checking his terminal.

“You’ll feel it, of course.”

“Making jokes about the Normandy blowing up? Really?” Kaidan asks.

Shepard flinches. “Sorry. Bed’s all yours. Or the couch. Anywhere, really.”

“Thanks. What about you?” he asks while slowly climbing down the steps to the bed.

“Might be fun crashing in the crew quarters,” Shepard replies, sounding gleeful about the idea. “Or that seat next to Joker, keep him company on the way to Berkenstein. He never sleeps.”

“That is not-” EDI starts. “That was an exaggeration.”

Kaidan laughs tiredly while slowly pulling off his regulation shirt. Deafening silence fills the room and then Shepard says, “I’ll leave you to it.”

He’s gone before Kaidan can say anything.


	10. Big Bad Wolf

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It begins.
> 
> *drops this off and runs off to work*

The Normandy is orbiting Berkenstein in the Boltzmann System when Kaidan finally limps out of the cabin. Rather than go down to the third deck and chance an encounter with Lawson, he heads to the second deck and settles into the empty seat next to Joker.

Joker glances at him. “You look like shit.”

He unwraps an energy bar and bites into it. “Where are we on her heist?”

“No idea. Should’ve seen it, though. She got this huge statue of Saren to smuggle their stuff in because apparently collecting statues of evil Spectres is a thing bad guys do. And she got Shepard to wear something fancy for the party. How did she do it?”

An hour later, Shepard contacts Joker to say he and Goto are returning to the Normandy, and to set coordinates for the Titan Nebula once the Kodiak is on board.

“EDI found the source of that VI virus from Jarrahe Station,” Joker says while plotting a course to the Widow System’s relay. “Even Cerberus thinks we should stop it before it infects other ships, and I thought hell would freeze over first.”

Kaidan leans out of his seat when the elevator door opens and Chambers says, “Welcome back, Commander. You have new messages at your private terminal.”

He stares.

“I know, right?” Joker whispers loudly. “So weird.”

Shepard keeps tugging at the collar of his dark form-fitting suit while checking his terminal. “Status, Joker?”

“We’re on our way, Commander. ETA twenty-two hours. By the way, nice suit!”

Half the deck snorts with laughter while the other half gawks at Shepard. He grimaces and then notices Kaidan. He stares for a moment, then powers down his terminal and goes to the helm.

“How’s your head?” he asks.

“Better.” Kaidan eyes the lines of Shepard’s formal wear. “What did Goto have on you?”

“The point was to stay undercover, not announce myself to a party full of criminals,” Shepard casually replies though his face reddens, reminding Kaidan quite abruptly of what she _would_ have on him. “She thinks I should wear it on the ship all the time. Goes with the leather seats and fish tank, apparently.”

Joker turns around. “Wait, we have a fish tank? Since when?”

“No one told you? They put one in my cabin. You should come up and see it some time.” Shepard then looks at Kaidan. “Listen, I need you to sit this one out.”

“I said-”

“You said but you didn’t leave the cabin for two days and you don’t _look_ fine. EDI said the VI virus came from a Hahne-Kedar research facility which is probably full of infected mechs. Think you can handle that?”

He can’t. Kaidan tried lifting one of Shepard’s datapads off the coffee table with his biotics and barely got it to shimmy across the surface. Even sitting in a chair is exhausting.

“And Grunt called dibs. Said he was bored and wanted to rip things apart with his bare hands. His words, not mine.”

“Isn’t that what Wrex used to say to get a spot on the Mako?” Kaidan says. “Ash thought it was hilarious.”

“I remember,” Shepard says with a fond smile. “Don’t push yourself.”

“I know. Don’t worry about me.”

This time, Shepard just squeezes his shoulder and heads back to the elevator. Kaidan sinks into his seat, warm all over, and then notices Joker watching him. “What?”

“What? Nothing.” Joker faces forward. “It’s nothing.”

* * *

“Shepard,” Samara says when the commander walks onto the starboard observation deck, dismissing her biotics and rising to her feet. “May we have some privacy, Kaidan?”

“Of course.”

He waits in the mess, browsing tech armor upgrades on a datapad, and glances up when Shepard leaves the room. The commander’s troubled expression prompts Kaidan to call him over. “What did she want?”

“My help,” Shepard says simply. “That fugitive Samara was after on Illium? EDI’s been tracking the cargo ship she escaped on.”

“Why is finding this person so important?” Kaidan asks. He thought Samara, of all people, would understand prioritizing the Collectors.

“I’ll let her explain that. What I can say is that the asari she’s hunting is a serial killer and Samara’s been after her for centuries,” Shepard says. “EDI tracked the ship to Omega. Thought about going there anyway; have some unfinished business to take care of.” He turns to leave and then asks, “Have you been there?”

“Omega is a shithole,” Lawson says hours later in the armory. “No laws and no rules except one - don’t piss off Aria.”

“Who?”

“Aria T’Loak is an asari and the de facto ruler of Omega,” EDI provides.

“The perfect place for this Morinth to hide,” Taylor says and slides over Kaidan’s modded pistols. Neither he nor Lawson seem aware of Samara’s connection to the asari fugitive, something Samara explained when Kaidan returned to the observation deck.

Lawson eyes Kaidan carefully while holstering her firearms. “Not sure how she’ll react to an Alliance officer on Omega.”

“Batarians might get you first,” Taylor adds. “Watch your six.”

Shepard and Samara are waiting at the airlock, discussing something. Once Kaidan and Lawson join, Shepard says, “Samara’s going ahead to investigate. EDI tried searching the death reports for a pattern but it’s Omega. We’re seeing Aria about Morinth; she’d know which deaths were caused by a - what was it?”

“An Ardat-Yakshi,” Samara says. “if I find something, I’ll let you know.”

She leaves first. Despite the air filters, the grimy damp scent of decay sweeps onto the bridge.

“And what about this unfinished business?” Kaidan asks.

When he isn’t staring at Omega’s neon signs and oily shadows, he’s watching Shepard grill a shifty salarian about the contents of two data packages. The salarian keeps glancing nervously at an unimpressed Lawson, and Kaidan wonders how they know each other. 

“I really wouldn’t want to be you when Aria finds out,” Shepard is saying. “And you know she will.”

After deliberating for two seconds, the salarian shoves the datapads back at Shepard. “You’re right. I want no part of this. I’m out of here.”

Shepard watches him leave and then breaks the datapads over his knee. He tosses them aside and then pulls his pistol on an approaching armed batarian.

The batarian points at Kaidan. “Aria wants to see you about him. Now.”

The way to Aria T’Loak is through the three-story nightclub Afterlife, an eternal cacophony of flashing lights and heavy beats catering to questionable patrons and dancing asari. Kaidan remembers Ashley’s derisive comments about the people gawking at the dancers in Chora’s Den and smiles despite himself. 

At the back of the second floor is a heavily guarded private lounge. A batarian stops Kaidan from following Shepard and Lawson in to scan him.

“That’s not necessary,” Shepard says.

“He’s Alliance.” An asari appears at the top of the lounge, watching Kaidan with cold eyes. “Can’t be too careful around them.”

The batarian steps back. “He’s clean.”

The asari, who can only be Aria T’Loak, beckons Shepard to join her at the couch. Lawson leans in to say, “You must know about Torfan and other similar incidents. No love lost for the Alliance here.”

“Or Cerberus,” Kaidan mutters, if only to see her startle and then smirk.

Aria suddenly throws a datapad at a batarian’s face. “How did this get on the net?”

“I’ll look into the leak,” the batarian says quickly. “It won’t happen again.”

“It better not.” She dismisses him and turns to Shepard. “Now, why are you really here?”

“Someone on my ship is tracking a fugitive.”

“That’s nothing new or special. Are they on the run from the Alliance? Why else would your friend be here?”

“She’s an Ardat-Yakshi-”

“ _I knew it_ ,” Aria hisses. “Something wasn’t right about the recent death reports. Nothing burns out a body quite like an Ardat-Yakshi. Do us both a favor and get her off my station. Her last victim lived near Gozu District if that’s what you’re here for.”

“Appreciate it, Aria,” Shepard says and rises from the couch.

“I’m keeping an eye on you,” Aria says, staring down at Kaidan. “So don’t give me a reason to throw you out the airlock.”

Outside Afterlife, Shepard contacts Samara to pass on the intel while Lawson returns to the Normandy. Kaidan watches the line of people waiting to enter Afterlife and a human arguing with the elcor bouncer.

“So,” Shepard says, “Samara’s already there. Morinth’s last victim was a human, Nef. Samara’s talking to her mother right now.”

Samara is at the apartments near Omega’s marketplace, listening patiently to Nef’s tearful mother explain her daughter’s last weeks in fits and bursts. Her eyes widen upon seeing Shepard and Kaidan.

“Are you here about my daughter, too?” she asks hopefully. “Are you here to find who did this to her?”

“We are,” Shepard says. “Can you tell me everything you told my friend?”

She grants permission to search Nef’s apartment, a tiny metal box crammed with necessities and art supplies that would’ve made Kaidan claustrophobic in a week. Samara notes all the ways Nef caught Morinth’s attention and listens gravely to her journal logs detailing her encounters with the Ardat-Yakshi.

“The hunt excites her as much as the kill,” Samara says outside the apartment complex, well out of earshot of Nef’s mother. “The only way to lure Morinth out is to give her what she wants. She will not be able to resist.”

“You want to bait her,” Kaidan realizes. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“When you’ve been hunting someone for four hundred years, you became able to predict their every move. That is my advantage,” Samara says and looks at Shepard. “You saw why Nef attracted her. I cannot show my face in the lounge but I will watch from afar. Draw her away and I will follow. I promise I will stop her before she takes it too far.”

“Are you sure about this?” Shepard asks.

“Yes. This is the only way.”

He nods. “Okay. Anything else I should know?”

“Shepard-,” Kaidan starts, dread crawling up his spine.

“I know what I’m doing,” he says. “And you know I play dangerously free-spirited better than you can.”

“That is true,” Samara says wryly. “But I could use another pair of eyes.”

He hates the plan - too many variables to account for and Samara’s description of Ardat-Yakshi is downright chilling - but what choice do they have? Shepard needs Samara to be dedicated to the mission and Samara needs to stop her daughter once and for all, so Kaidan sighs and says, “All right.”

* * *

“What’s the difference between the VIP lounge and the rest of Afterlife?”Kaidan mutters after telling a human solicitor to leave. He sidesteps into a shadowed corner of the club to watch Shepard wade into the writhing colorful crowd.

Shepard laughs through the comm link. _“You know a guy who knows a guy who knows how to get into the VIP lounge. That doesn’t sound impressive?”_

“No.”

_“And this is why I’m the - hang on. Hey, the lady told you to leave her alone….”_

Seconds later, a turian tumbles out of the dance floor. A slightly breathless Shepard then says, _“Where was I?”_

The first thought crossing Kaidan’s mind is horribly inappropriate. He blames it on the club’s heady aura, the beats and the lights and the bodies pressing up against him and each other. Clearing his throat, he says, “You being Morinth’s prey.”

Shepard doesn’t respond immediately. _“... maybe I’ll talk the bartender into giving everyone free drinks. I could use one.”_

 _“She admires a free spirit,”_ Samara says, reminding Kaidan that the justicar is also on the line. _“It’s worth a try.”_

Kaidan watches him go to the bar to chat up the bartender but his attention soon wanders to two turians huddled nearby, discussing ways to earn easy credits. He tries to ignore them but once they settle on mugging people leaving the club, he approaches.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he says casually.

“Oh yeah?” one turian says. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll walk away.”

“Afraid I can’t do that.”

The other turian sizes him up. “Looks like this human needs to learn how to mind his own business.”

Nearby patrons backpedal when the turian tries to punch him. Kaidan ducks and throws them into the wall with a field. He turns when the bouncer arrives with security and says, “They attacked me.”

Bystanders nod frantically and the bouncer drags the two turians out with a gruff thanks. Kaidan drags a hand through his hair, breathes deeply, and returns to his spot.

 _“What was that?”_ Shepard demands.

“Nothing. Just had two muggers tossed out.”

_“Of course you did-”_

_“Shepard,”_ Samara says sharply. _“I see her but she’s watching Kaidan. Draw her attention away._ ”

He glances around the VIP lounge and stiffens at the sight of an asari leaning against a partition near the bar. Her resemblance to Samara is uncanny but while Samara’s pale eyes harbor warmth and kindness, the asari’s are full of hunger. 

He holds his breath until something distracts her - Shepard sizing up a krogan at the bar. The krogan leaves in a huff and she approaches the commander with a smile.

 _“Remember,”_ Samara says while Shepard follows Morinth to a private booth. _“Keep her interested and give nothing away. She must not know about me.”_

Using cues from Nef’s apartment, Shepard answers every one of Morinth’s questions with aplomb. Morinth leans closer every time Shepard speaks, looking utterly taken, but her eyes remain cold and calculating. She knows how to lure her victims in, disarming them with starkly hungry attention and purring her words when she knows she has theirs. 

“Let’s get out of here,” she suggests, promise lacing every word, and Shepard follows her out.

 _“Kaidan,”_ Samara prompts and he leaves the VIP lounge, unaware of the flicker of dark energy trailing in his wake.

Samara meets him at the stairs leading down to Morinth’s apartment and says, “Wait here. If this ends poorly for me and Shepard, you must be ready to kill her.”

“You’ll do this?” Kaidan asks. He can understand what it means to finally catch up to a dangerous fugitive - almost; he doesn’t know what it’s like chasing someone for four centuries - but her own flesh and blood? Her own child?

“Yes,” Samara says. Her voice gives nothing away but her eyes are full of grief as she goes down the stairs. “Be ready.”

He waits, pacing before the steps, wondering what Morinth is doing now. How long until she makes her move? What if she gets to Shepard first? If Samara’s too late-

Light flashes from the windows and he flinches at the muffled crash inside the complex. His skin prickles under his armor and suit at the dark energy crackling inside Morinth’s apartment. He can taste it on his tongue.

“Get back,” he tells curious locals. His biotics flare when they don’t leave despite the violent pulse of dark energy shattering several windows. “I said get back. Now.”

Once the area is clear of civilians, he takes out his pistol and heads down the stairs. Before he reaches the bottom, the apartment door opens; he raises his pistol while wrapping himself in a barrier field, bracing for the worst. He lowers both when Shepard and Samara step out, speckled with bluish blood and looking winded.

“What happened?” he asks carefully.

“What I came here to do,” Samara replies. Her reserved demeanor is cracked in too many places but she also looks relieved, finally free of the heaviest of burdens. “Shepard, inform Aria that Morinth no longer poses a threat to Omega. I will return to the ship. There is… much to reflect on.”

Shepard nods and looks at Kaidan with an unreadable expression. “You should probably head back, too. Aria won’t be the only one to figure out you’re Alliance.”

“You sure?” Kaidan asks warily.

“Yeah.” Shepard smiles tightly and turns to leave. “I’ll be fine.”

* * *

Forty-seven minutes passed since they split and Shepard still hasn’t returned to the ship. EDI confirms that he’s at Afterlife but the radio silence is unnerving. Kaidan considers going back out to find him.

“Okay, no,” Joker finally says, turning his seat around. “Just - just stop, okay? You’re driving me nuts.”

Kaidan keeps pacing. “You’re not worried?”

“Last EDI checked, he’s still alive. Plus, he’s Shepard. Only an idiot would try to pick a fight with him.”

“He is leaving Afterlife,” EDI says helpfully.

“See? He’s coming back. Now will you stop?” Joker shakes his head despairingly while turning his seat around. “And I thought Shepard was bad.”

“Bad about what?”

“Nothing.” Then his shoulders slump. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t put up with this - look, Kaidan, I know you’re better than this. You have to know he’s been sweet on you ever since you came back.”

Kaidan freezes mid stride. “What?”

“Oh my god.” Joker drags a hand down his face. “You’re shitting me, right? First of all, who do you think got you your fancy _expensive_ tech armor? Second, when you had one of your migraines? He sat here for two days and was a freaking nightmare for all of it. Got really snippy with my piloting skills and kept asking EDI if you were still breathing.”

“I can confirm this,” EDI says, adding to Kaidan’s mortification.

“And I’m not even touching that Collector ship fiasco or that he gave up his own bed so you could have somewhere to ride it out - wow, that came out way wrong.”

“Joker,” Kaidan says, trying to stop him from digging too deep.

“You think this started with Horizon? It’s been going on since Day One. I’m talking about Eden Prime. _Two years ago._ And you had no idea.” Joker shakes his head despairingly. “How could you not-”

“Welcome back, Shepard,” EDI announces right before the airlock opens.

Kaidan can’t bring himself to look at Shepard so it’s just his luck that Shepard says, “Can we talk?”

He sighs. But he’s nothing if not professional so he says, “Of course.”

He follows Shepard to the elevator, wondering what’s on the commander’s mind. Once inside, Shepard asks for the third deck and that’s when Kaidan sees the fading bruise on the left side of his face.

“What happened?” he demands. “Don’t tell me you picked a fight.”

“Wasn’t like that,” Shepard says evasively.

“EDI, stop the elevator.” He steps into Shepard’s space and backs him into the corner, trying to catch and hold his gaze. His nose wrinkles at the sweet stench of liquor. “What the hell happened, Shepard?”

Shepard sidesteps him, rubbing the back of his neck and staring at his feet. “Aria needed help. Blood Pack mercs were after one of her people so I offered to be his krantt. Krogan got in a lucky hit but I’m fine and they’re not.”

“You’re not fine.” Knowing about the synthetic weaves grafted into his body doesn’t stop Kaidan from reaching over to examine the bruising. Shepard flinches before going still. “You need to stop doing this.”

“What, help people?” Shepard says. His eyes close while Kaidan continues searching for fractures that won’t be there. “Aria did a lot more for me than she’ll admit. Thought I’d return the favor.”

“And that means facing krogans without backup?”

Shepard hums and leans into his hand, looking terribly, achingly vulnerable. He reminds Kaidan of the night after they fled for Ilos while Virmire was a raw wound, and of the quiet off-shift hours in the weeks after the battle for the Citadel. It was a face he didn’t show anybody else.

“Stayed at Afterlife because I needed a drink,” Shepard admits quietly. “Morinth tried to seduce me and realized I was working with Samara… and that I had someone else in mind.” He sighs, cracking an eye open while nuzzling into Kaidan’s calloused palm. “Samara said I should talk to you. I couldn’t, so-”

“You went for a drink and got into a fight with krogan mercenaries,” Kaidan says. “Talking to me was probably the better idea.” He shivers at the wet huff on his palm, the brush of Shepard’s mouth across it. “What are we doing?”

“Stopping the Collectors.”

“Shepard.”

“I don’t know,” he confesses. “I was dead for two years, Kaidan. I missed out on so much. I don’t know where we, where you-”

“Shepard,” and EDI’s blue hologram appears on the platform inside the elevator, “the Illusive Man wishes to speak with you about the IFF.”

Shepard sighs and steps back, breaking contact. “Thanks, EDI. Take us back to the CIC.” He looks at Kaidan, face flushed and gray eyes pensive under the lights. “Duty calls. Can we talk later?”

Kaidan nods and watches him leave the elevator for the briefing room. Quietly, like an afterthought, he says, “I’d like that.”


	11. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I may or may not have six different versions of the dialogue in the central scene. It was... difficult to get the direction of the conversation, the flow, and the dynamic to a satisfactory point, but I think I have it.
> 
> You wouldn't believe all the unintended times I brought up memory and decided to keep it because this chapter _is_ called "Memory".
> 
>  
> 
> Happy weekend!

A dead Reaper orbits a brown dwarf in the Thorne System, the relic of a forgotten war. Despite the shuddering and roiling of the Normandy straining against Mnemosyne’s punishing winds, a hush falls over the deck as the crew stares at the Reaper hull on their screens.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Joker mutters while steering the Normandy towards the massive construct. “Are you sure it’s dead? Like, _dead_ dead?”

Kaidan barely hears his nervous chatter. He still remembers Sovereign’s incomprehensible mass as it clutched the Citadel and waited for Saren to activate the mass relay. He still remembers the names of all the ships the Alliance lost destroying it.

“Joker, what’s with the turbulence?” Shepard says while walking unsteadily to the cockpit. The Normandy jolts from a heavy gust and he staggers into Kaidan while grabbing the back of Joker’s chair.

“Winds at five hundred kph,” Joker replies testily and pushes the Normandy onward. The winds abruptly die as they draw near the hull and he says, “And we just entered the Reaper’s mass effect fields. Can’t believe it’s still generating them.”

“Sensors are picking up another ship alongside the Reaper,” EDI announces. “Initial scans suggest it is a geth vessel.”

“Explains why the Cerberus team went silent,” Kaidan says and slowly lets go of Shepard’s armored shoulder. “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine,” Shepard says. He glances over his shoulder when Garrus and Lawson exit the armory, armed and ready to board the Cerberus team’s research facility. “Joker, take us in.”

While Shepard and Lawson discuss priority - her secondary task is to retrieve the team’s data - Garrus sidles over to Kaidan. “I’ll keep an eye on him.”

“Thanks,” he says, not that it loosens the knot in his chest when he watches them leave the ship.

* * *

After the Reaper’s kinetic barriers go up, Kaidan starts pacing behind Joker. Of course any mission that involves walking around the inside of a Reaper hull would run into complications. Lawson then begins uploading data and logs, revealing the Cerberus team’s slow slide to indoctrination.

“This is so bad,” Joker mutters repeatedly while watching for subtle changes in the environment and tracking their proximity to both the Reaper and the brown dwarf. Once the Reaper’s mass effect core fails, the team will only have minutes to escape before it succumbs to Mnemosyne’s crushing gravity.

The next two hours crawl by. The Reaper’s hull obstructs the ship’s scanners, preventing accurate readings, and updates from the boarding party come in nerve-wracking irregular bursts. The uploaded logs become increasingly unintelligible and erratic, full of paranoid researchers accusing each other of stealing memories, and then Garrus alerts them to a geth sniper killing husks before vanishing into the dark, explaining both the geth ship and the research team’s unfortunate fate.

“You’re right,” Kaidan says at the ninety-eight minute mark. “It’s not actually dead. The core, the husks, it’s still doing what it’s supposed to do even if we think it doesn’t function anymore.”

“What, turn nosy scientists into mindless cybernetic zombies?” Joker says. “That’s great. That’s just freaking great.”

Shepard finally radios in to say the Cerberus team had successfully retrieved the Reaper’s IFF before indoctrination overwhelmed them. All that’s left now is to destroy the core to bring down the kinetic barriers preventing Shepard, Garrus, and Lawson from leaving.

“Here we go,” Joker mutters, echoing Garrus in the audio feed’s background. “Just tell me when, Commander.”

Time slows while they wait anxiously for the next update. Kaidan can’t look at the Reaper anymore; his skin crawls at the sight and he wonders about the reach of a dead Reaper’s insidious influence. Is this how indoctrination starts?

The ship shudders and he latches onto Joker’s chair.

 _“Normandy,”_ Shepard calls in over the grating groan of a Reaper collapsing from the brown dwarf’s gravity. _“Need that pick up_ now _.”_

“On my way,” Joker says and detaches the ship from the research facility’s docking bay. “Hold on.”

Mnemosyne’s winds batter the Normandy as it skirts around the falling Reaper, chasing the team’s signal. Shepard patches in again to tell Joker to open the airlock but to not bring the ship closer. Scanners show the team moving to an exposed platform at an unusually slow pace while hostiles follow erratically. Kaidan grips Joker’s chair and doesn’t let go or breathe until Shepard tells Joker they’re on board. He also calls for security.

The interior airlock hisses open and Kaidan turns to see Shepard and Garrus arguing while hauling in an intact geth. Lawson follows close behind, windswept and with eyes glued to her omni-tool. Armed crewmen meet Shepard and Garrus to relieve them of the geth unit. At a suggestion from EDI, Shepard tells them to take it down to the AI core room.

“Geth,” Joker says disbelievingly. “He brought _geth_ onto my ship.”

“I’m telling you,” Garrus is saying, “all you’re doing is invite trouble. And for what?”

“It knows me. It called me by name. It helped us reach the Reaper core. _It’s wearing pieces of my old N7 armor._ EDI, I want barriers around it.”

“Very well, Shepard. I have also taken extra precautions and am ready for any hacking attempts should it spontaneously reactivate.”

Garrus throws his hands in the air and stalks away. “Your ship, your call. But you’re explaining this to Tali, not me.”

Shepard sighs, waves Chambers off when the yeoman tries to speak, and heads to the cockpit. He smiles tightly at Kaidan before giving Joker instructions.

“Shepard,” Kaidan says when the commander turns to leave. “What happened?”

He sighs and rubs the back of his head. “Ask me later. I need to….” He abruptly walks away, leaving Kaidan with more questions.

* * *

Kaidan watches Mnemosyne on the starboard observation deck. Debriefing hasn’t happened yet; Shepard called Tali up to hand over the IFF, asked her to coordinate with EDI and the crew, and then went to his cabin. He didn’t say a word about the inactive geth sniper stashed in the AI core or what happened inside the Reaper hull.

Neither Garrus nor Lawson is talking about it, either.

“This mission demands much of us, individually and collectively,” Samara says, interrupting his thoughts. “It is beginning to take a toll regardless of how ready we are to face it.” She looks at him, eyes glowing. “Talk to him. It will ease you as well.”

Lawson is sitting in the mess when he leaves the deck, nursing a steaming mug while studying several datapads. She looks exhausted.

He spends the short elevator ride up wondering what to say. He could ask Shepard about the mission but they have an unfinished conversation to continue. He wonders if Shepard also thinks it’s one they started years ago on another Normandy.

He knocks on Shepard’s door and only waits half a second before it opens to let him in.

Shepard sits on the couch, pouring from a half-empty bottle of brandy. Stress lines mark his face like scars and he barely musters a smile when Kaidan joins him. “What brings you here?”

“Wanted to see how you’re doing,” Kaidan says, watching Shepard down half the glass without flinching. “That bad?”

“Think I finally understand what Matriarch Benezia meant,” Shepard says quietly. “We were only in there for, what, two hours? Three? I couldn’t relax, not with those walls and dragon’s teeth and husks. Not that anyone wandering around inside a dead Reaper should let their guard down but….” He exhales heavily. “We have the IFF. That’s what matters.”

“Is it?”

Shepard shrugs and stares into his glass. “Stopping the Collectors is the priority.”

“Not for me,” Kaidan says and Shepard looks at him sharply. “Not entirely. I know we have to stop them but I… I’m here because of you. Even if it means working with Cerberus.”

The commander smiles fondly. “I mean that much to you?”

“You convinced an Alliance crew to mutiny and run off to Ilos against orders,” Kaidan says. “We trusted you to make the right decisions and you didn’t let us down. That hasn’t changed.”

“Asking you, not the entire ship,” Shepard says. “Or do I have to say this is off the record?”

He huffs a laugh at the reminder. “All right. I trust you. Except for that one time on Horizon but I was having a really bad day and you were supposed to be dead.”

“It was a pretty shitty day,” Shepard agrees. He grabs another tumbler from a side table to fill and pushes it to Kaidan. He doesn’t top off his; instead he drains it, takes a deep breath, and says, “I guess now’s a good time to talk.”

“Yeah, guess we should.” Joker’s outburst comes to mind but so does that moment in the elevator just days ago. He clears his throat and asks, “What are we doing, Shepard?”

Shepard hesitates. “... I don’t know. Was hoping you’d have an answer.”

“Really? Why?”

“Because I was dead for two years,” he says and the words are a punch in the gut. “Long enough for everyone to move on. Picking things back up again… is that even possible?” Shepard won’t look at him, eyes downcast. “I remember everything like it was just a few months ago, but you had years.”

“What do you remember?” Kaidan asks, knowing full well what he’s talking about.

“Us. The off-duty hours when we sat in the mess and just talked. Still don’t know how you found the time to sneak that bottle in before we ran off to Ilos,” Shepard says, smiling fondly at the memory. “And the nights when we were hunting geth, do you remember?”

“How could I forget?” Kaidan says. He just doesn’t remember what they talked about. “Pressley gave me so much flack for yawning during my shifts but it was worth it.”

“I missed those,” Shepard says. He picks up his empty glass and turns it over in his hands, staring at the glint of light on its rim. “They kept me sane for a long time. But it was never just that, was it?”

“No,” Kaidan says softly, unable to stop himself. He remembers the building tension, the days he gave only laconic answers to spare himself. “It wasn’t.”

Shepard still won’t look at him. The flush on his face isn’t just from the brandy and Kaidan can’t stop staring. “I wanted to ask but I was your CO and you’d never fraternize with anyone you serve with. I tried to let it go.” He smiles bitterly. “I still regret it.”

“You should’ve said something.” Shepard might be right but at least Kaidan wouldn’t have had to spend months wondering what might have been. “I started wondering that night before Ilos. I thought maybe, when it was over… but it just never seemed right. Then you died and all I had was ‘what if?’ What if you didn’t die? What if one of us said something? I lived with that for over a year.”

“Kaidan….”

“I did move on. We all did, except maybe Liara. Because that’s what you do. Your CO dies, you have your evals, you’re reassigned, and you keep going forward. I did that and I was doing fine, and then you came back. It was… I was so angry. You were alive for weeks and never tried to contact me. And Cerberus? But I couldn’t walk away. I already lost you once; I couldn’t lose you again. The brass knew so they grounded me. They thought I’d pull another Ilos and run off to find you.”

Kaidan breathes deeply, desperately, remembering that he can. He feels raw all over, ripping out everything he kept to himself since the day he lost Shepard and the day the Collectors came to Horizon.

He looks up at the shaky inhale and Shepard’s quiet, “So, what are you saying?”

Two years ago, Kaidan probably would’ve said no. He was a subordinate officer and it would’ve been inappropriate, no matter the leeway the Alliance might’ve given them or how much facing down the impossible and surviving changed him. But that was two years ago and he’s not that person anymore.

“If we don’t survive this, I don’t want to die never having had that chance. After all this time, Shepard… you and me. What do you think?”

Shepard finally looks up, nervous and hopeful, and he forgets to breathe. He feels emboldened, too, and goes to Shepard’s side. Shepard’s eyes are bright under the lights and then they close when Kaidan slides a hand along the side of his face. Here, Kaidan sees the fine cracks in the warm golden skin, the flash of cybernetic weave underneath that helps hold Shepard together. He brushes his thumb over them and Shepard shivers.

“You and me,” Shepard whispers. “I’d like that.”

Kaidan kisses him and tastes brandy on his lips. Shepard moans, low and needy, as he deepens it and kisses back with heat, with desperation and relief. His hands find and pull on the collar of Kaidan’s shirt and Kaidan obliges, pushing Shepard down on the couch while chasing liquor and bittersweet into his mouth.

When Kaidan returns to the deck an hour later, Samara is still meditating. She smiles knowingly when he sits in front of the window to watch the stars but says nothing.

* * *

“It may take a few weeks to safely integrate the IFF,” EDI explains during the debriefing held several hours after leaving the Thorne System. “I will provide regular updates at your disposal.”

A few weeks of waiting for the crew to safely install the IFF leaves some people with too much time on their hands, like Garrus. He’s the first only because Tali is preoccupied with scrubbing the IFF. It also helps that Shepard is currently planetside with Massani and Krios, dealing with a Blue Suns operation.

Kaidan parks himself on a crate in the main battery to keep Garrus company. After a few minutes of silently modifying the ship’s targeting algorithms, Garrus says, “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know.”

“Tell you what?”

Garrus just looks at him. “Whatever you and Shepard get up to in private. I _really_ don’t want to know.”

He mutters, “Noted,” and gets up to leave because he is not having this conversation today.

“But… it’s a good thing. Odds are against us surviving this mission so you might as well take whatever happiness you can get. Also, you won me eight hundred credits.”

“You were placing bets?” he asks Tali down in engineering. He keeps his voice low but the other engineers still give him funny looks.

“Ashley and Wrex started it,” she says. “It was funny and kept us busy during the downtime. We stopped after Virmire but,” and her head tilts slyly at him, “Garrus and I decided to start it up again after I came back. Don’t worry - it’s just us, Joker, and Wrex. Too bad Doctor Chakwas backed out; she would’ve cleaned us all out.”

He’s never looking at the good doctor the same way again. “Unbelievable.” Then, “Who owes Garrus eight hundred credits?”

She beams, a feat considering her tinted helmet. “Wrex. Joker has no idea and we want to keep it that way.” Kaidan raises an eyebrow. “Garrus and I have a bet going. Let me win, okay?”

When he leaves engineering, Jack calls out, “Finally hitting that, pretty boy?” from the ship’s bowels.

He goes up to the second deck and decides to keep Joker company. He glances at the pilot every several minutes, wondering if Joker’s outburst had something to do with this so-called betting pool. After a while, Joker notices and asks, “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” Kaidan says and fishes a protein bar out of his pocket.

Joker watches him devour it in four bites and pull out two more, then shakes his head and mutters, “Freaking biotic metabolism,” while checking the Normandy’s systems.

After the shuttle returns, Shepard arrives at the CIC to Chambers saying, “Commander, you have a new message at your private terminal.”

“Thanks, Kelly.”He notices Kaidan sitting at the helm with Joker and quirks a smile before going to the armory to stash his firearms.

Kaidan faces forward when Chambers glances between them with a frown, not that it’ll discourage her from putting the two and two together. He just hopes whatever she deduces doesn’t go in any Cerberus report.

After reading the new message, Shepard joins Kaidan and Joker at the cockpit. He asks EDI for an update on the IFF and then tells Joker to chart a course to Illium.

“Cerberus found some intel on the Shadow Broker and wants me to pass it on to Liara,” he says. “Since he tried to sell my body to the Collectors, among other things, they’re just as interested in taking him out as she is.”

“And they didn’t forward her the intel directly because?” Kaidan asks.

“She doesn’t trust them.” Shepard looks over his shoulder at the CIC. “And Illium’s not a bad place for some shore leave.”

“As long as nobody signs anything. Remember to tell them that,” Kaidan says. He considers his last protein bar and holds it out to Shepard.

Joker watches them with narrowed eyes. “Did I miss something? Are you-”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Shepard says and pats Joker’s shoulder. “Tell Tali to meet me at the AI core in an hour. You too, Kaidan.”

He unwraps the protein bar while walking away. Kaidan watches him disappear into Solus’s lab and shrugs when Joker looks at him. “Biotic metabolism.”


	12. Liara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really love the Lair of the Shadow Broker DLC.

“This is such a bad idea,” Tali says while watching Shepard try to reactivate the geth sniper in the AI core room. “It only takes a single geth to bring down the whole ship.”

Remembering an earlier conversation about her work with her father, Kaidan leans in to ask, “You wouldn’t send something like that to your father?”

“ _Never_. Keelah, if I did and it spontaneously came online, the damage it could do-” She shudders. “No, I don’t want to think about it.”

“If it turns hostile, you have permission to shoot,” Shepard tells them and the crewman standing guard. “But it saved my life and I want to know why.”

“You said it talked, right?” Tali says. “I never encountered any geth that could. Or bother to build themselves in order to communicate with us.”

“Most geth you encounter are trying to kill you,” Kaidan points out. “Maybe they made this one just so it can talk to us.”

“Which is why I’m bringing it online,” Shepard says. “Stand by.”

The second attempt wakes the geth sniper. It slowly sits up and scans its surroundings with its photoreceptor while testing its head flaps. Its lens then focuses on Shepard.

“Shepard-Commander,” it says. It makes no attempts to break down the barrier and Tali quietly confirms that the Normandy’s systems aren’t under attack.

Its photoreceptor occasionally swivels to Kaidan and Tali while answering Shepard’s questions and EDI’s occasional inquiry. After several one-word answers, it begins responding in fuller sentences.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Tali admits. “Geth become more powerful and complex when networked to each other. Isolated units have very limited processes, not that you should underestimate them, but this one was built specifically to function independently. But why only one? If my father knew - what are you doing?”

Shepard steps back while the barrier around the geth disappears. “It wants to help us stop the Collectors.”

“What? Why?” Kaidan asks. His fingers twitch when the geth looks at him.

“You saw what Nazara did with the heretics. The Old Machines are a threat to our future as well as yours. It will be mutually beneficial to both synthetic and organic life to assist you.”

“That’s what you call the Reapers?” Shepard asks. “And who’s Nazara?”

“The one you call Sovereign. We oppose the Old Machines. Geth make our own future. We will fight for you, Shepard-Commander.” Its photoreceptor focuses on Tali. “Does the creator approve?”

Tali hesitates. “That’s not my decision to make.”

“For the sake of unit cohesion, we request an answer.”

She picks her words carefully, head tilted towards Shepard the entire time. “If this was someone else’s ship, you’d be thrown out the airlock in pieces. But this is Shepard’s, and I defer to his judgment.” She then looks at the commander fully. “But if that thing comes near me or my things, I promise nothing.”

She leaves before Shepard could say anything. Joker then announces over the intercom that they reached the Tasale System.

“What do I call you?” Shepard asks.

“Geth,” the sniper replies. It doesn’t change its answer until EDI suggests a name appropriate for a mobile platform housing over a thousand programs.

“Legion,” Shepard says, “right now we’re heading to Illium in the Tasale System. The crew needs to spend time away from this ship. But if people see you walking around-”

“Then we will remain here until the Normandy departs.”

“We still have about an hour. Meet me in the tech labs on Deck 2; Mordin’s been tinkering with something that works better with mechs and synthetics, and we don’t have any mechs.”

“Understood, Shepard-Commander,” Legon says and leaves the room.

At a look from Shepard, the armed crewman also departs. Kaidan leans against the wall and says, “So now we have an active geth sniper on the ship.”

“It’s not hostile, it didn’t try to hack the Normandy or EDI, and it says the Reapers are just as dangerous to the geth. That’s all I need.”

“You believe it?”

“I don’t think Legion’s capable of lying but I wouldn’t play Skyllian Five with it,” Shepard says. “Should warn the others before they panic and accidentally shoot it.”

“Friendly or not, you need to keep an eye on it. Tali said she’ll tolerate Legion but that could change fast if it tries something. Last thing you need is the team falling apart over a war that happened three hundred years ago.”

Shepard leans in. “This is why I always talk to you,” he murmurs and kisses Kaidan. He lingers for a moment longer and then leaves the room.

Kaidan smiles and shakes his head, and then goes to the starboard observation deck to watch the Normandy approach Illium.

* * *

“Shore leave is officially over,” Kaidan mutters when they arrive at an active crime scene in Liara’s apartment.

“It has to be the Shadow Broker,” Tali says. “I hope she’s okay. She’s Liara. She’s okay.”

An officer stops them at the door and refuses to explain the situation or where Liara was. Then an asari commando walks down the stairs, coolly dismissing the officers, and introduces herself as the Spectre Tela Vasir.

“A Spectre, here? Why are you investigating?” Tali asks.

“I’ve been tracking the Shadow Broker’s activities over the last several years,” Vasir replies. “T’Soni knew his operations better than anyone so I came here to ask a few questions. Found this instead.” She turns to Shepard. “You said she would’ve left you a message. You know her better than me; any ideas where to look?”

Liara’s apartment is elegant when one ignores the bullet holes riddling the windows and walls, and the upended furnishings. Tali studies a painting of Ilos and a display case next to it housing a Prothean artifact; there are several such displays all over the apartment, a reminder of Liara’s past. But one case, placed far from the others, catches Kaidan’s attention.

“It’s a piece of your old armor,” he says when Shepard comes by. “How did she find it?”

“She found it on Alchera,” Shepard says quietly. “That’s where the Normandy crashed.”

“Someone really didn’t like you,” Vasir remarks while going through miscellany on Liara’s desk. “Looks like she was in a real hurry.”

Kaidan watches her move around Liara’s office. “I don’t trust her.”

“She’s a Spectre. Until we know why she’s really here, follow her lead,” Shepard says and goes upstairs.

A bedside photo finally gives away Liara’s reason for lingering in her apartment for several minutes after the attack. Kaidan watches Shepard hurry downstairs to investigate the display cases; one of them ejects a hidden drawer with a disk containing a recorded conversation between Liara and a salarian named Sekat.

 _“I can narrow it down to a cluster, maybe even a system,”_ Sekat says. _“I can’t say more. Meet me at my office in Baria Frontiers in the Dracon Trade Center; I’ll explain the rest.”_

“Dracon Trade Center isn’t that far,” Vasir says after the rest of the recording plays out. “We can take my skycar.”

In the minutes from Liara’s apartment to the trade center, Vasir questions Shepard about his whereabouts in the past two years. When he won’t say, she starts asking about his association with Cerberus.

“What is she getting at?” Tali wonders sotto voce.

“She wants something,” Kaidan decides.

Shepard tilts his head towards them and tells Vasir, “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Suit yourself.”

Vasir brings the skycar down to the plaza in front of the Dracon Trade Center and they climb out. “Baria Frontiers is on the third floor-”

The building explodes. Fireballs light up the night sky and Kaidan throws out a barrier field to block burning debris. Screams fill the plaza as injured and shell-shocked civilians stagger away from the trade center.

“Nice barrier,” Vasir says after Kaidan dismisses it. “Must be the Broker’s agents. Doubt anyone survived that.”

“It’s Liara,” Shepard says and takes out his shotgun. “We’re finding her.”

“Then I’ll go to the roof to seal it off,” the Spectre says and hops into the skycar. “Save some for me.”

They herd the survivors away from the building before entering. Tali scans a malfunctioning terminal for information while Kaidan checks the locked elevator, mouth shut to keep out the black smoke. Shepard turns over the bodies, looking for survivors and clues.

“How did the Shadow Broker know she’d be here?” Tali says.

“He has to know she’s getting too close,” Kaidan replies. “Nyxeris must’ve bugged her.”

“Remind me to sweep her apartment later.”

Shepard asks Vasir for an update while they head up to the second floor. “Anything?”

_“Nothing yet. Notice the lack of security and police? This was a professional hit. Keep your eyes open and watch your backs.”_

The second floor plaza is also full of smoke, rubble, and bodies. Kaidan turns one over and spots bullet wounds in their torso. “They weren’t killed by the explosion.”

Shepard informs Vasir as they climb the stairs to the third floor and Baria Frontiers. He checks the log book for clues and a name. “Liara signed in a few minutes before the explosion. So where is she?”

The offices are full of acrid smoke and pools of water from the overhead sprinklers. They move cautiously through the lobby but one step into the corridor and a flashbang grenade slides down it to their feet. Kaidan pulls Tali away and shields his eyes before it explodes but Shepard charges forward in a biotic blur to outrace it, plowing into the assailants hiding in an office at the end of the hall.

 _“Hello? Shepard? What’s your status?”_ Vasir calls in over the shouts and gunfire.

“We’re under attack,” Shepard replies. “Shadow Broker?”

_“Who else?”_

Kaidan shoots an agent in the leg and throws two others into the wall along with half the office furniture. He overloads another agent’s shields, leaving the man with no protection when Shepard discharges his biotic barrier.

“Go get them, Chatika,” Tali tells her drone while deploying it. It roots out three agents hiding in the office across the hall, electrocuting them and drawing them out into the open for Kaidan and Shepard to take out.

“They must’ve come in after setting off the explosives,” Kaidan says. “Liara has to be here somewhere.”

“Think you’re right. She knows the Broker’s after her. She’d be prepared for anything, including this mess,” Shepard replies and pops the spent thermal clip in his shotgun before heading down the flooded hall. He glows blue upon spotting an agent hastily taking cover and storms forward.

With Shepard blazing a destructive biotic trail, they sweep through the offices, searching for signs of Liara or her salarian contact, and taking out any Broker agent in their way. They then run into a trio of agents guarding a corridor on the upper level, a suspicious sight, and quickly dispose of the three men. The agents were apparently guarding a locked door at the end of the hall; while Tali bypasses the lock, a gunshot rings out on the other side.

They enter the room, guns drawn, to find Vasir with a dead Broker agent at her feet. “About time,” the Spectre says. “Shame I didn’t get here sooner.”

A bloodied salarian sits against the wall, eyes gouged out. Shepard crouches down in front of the body. “Is this Sekat?”

“Looks like. The data isn’t on him, though. They must’ve taken it and left before I arrived.” Vasir pushes the agent’s body away with her foot. “Did you find Liara’s body?”

Liara emerges from the smoke and shadows, pistol trained on Vasir’s head. “You mean this body?”

* * *

“You said the Illusive Man wanted you back exactly as you are?” Liara asks while Shepard brings the cab down to the roof of the resort Vasir crashed into.

“Yeah, why?” 

“He could’ve improved your driving skills,” she says.

“Hey!”

Kaidan would laugh if he wasn’t feeling so queasy. “Hate to say it, Shepard, but she’s right. Your driving still sucks.”

“Remember Ontarom?” Liara says.

“With the Mako?”

“Yes. What did that poor cow ever do to you?”

“You’re both awful,” Shepard mutters and climbs out of the taxi. A hovercar soars overhead, full of agents and engineers. “We have company.”

“Good,” Liara says and dark energy crackles over her body. “Vasir isn’t getting away from me.”

She throws a field at the hovercar while it’s still landing, knocking two people off it. They scream while tumbling over the side of the building.

Vasir’s skycar crashed into the walkway just outside a glass-walled suite. The security mechs lie in pieces but the suite’s residents were left unharmed. They’re too terrified to talk so Liara focuses on the smoking wreckage for signs of Vasir.

“She’s hurt,” Liara says, nodding to a trail of purple blood dripping down the walkway. “That’ll slow her down. Let’s go.”

“Liara-” Shepard says but she’s already moving ahead. “Never seen her like this.”

“Vasir’s a problem, too,” Kaidan says. “She’s a Spectre. Now that we know she’s working for the Broker, she’ll do everything to shut us down.”

EDI informs them that Tali returned to the Normandy and the others have been notified of the situation while they run after Liara. The blood trail leads them in and out of various trashed suites with emptied medical kids, overturned furnishings, and broken mechs. Kaidan supposes they’re lucky Vasir hasn’t turned on people yet.

They finally catch up to Vasir on a crowded patio. With nowhere to run, she grabs an unsuspecting human and puts a gun to her head. Kaidan directs the other civilians inside the building while Shepard tries to talk Vasir down.

“She has a son, Shepard,” Vasir taunts, unaware of a table lifting off the ground behind her. “I hear losing a parent really messes up a child. Do you want that for him? Drop your weapons and I’ll let her go.”

“Do you know who you’re dealing with?” he retorts. “I’m Commander Shepard. I sacrificed hundreds of lives to save the Destiny Ascension. I unleashed the rachni on the galaxy. I killed Saren Arterius. Want me to go on?”

Rattled, Vasir turns her pistol on Shepard. “Nice try, but-”

“Now, Liara!”

Liara throws the table at Vasir, knocking her into a decorative pool. Kaidan quickly pulls the woman away and tells her to run, then takes out his pistol and advances on the pool with Shepard and Liara.

Vasir explodes out of the water in a biotic blur and snarls, “You think you can stop me?”

Few opponents are as devastating as Spectres, even wounded ones. Vasir rockets around the patio, making herself impossible to pin down with gunfire and biotics. Shepard starts swearing loudly the fifth time she darts out of range of his shotgun.

“How do you think I feel?” Kaidan says while ducking behind a raised pool.

“Yes, how do you think we all felt?” Liara adds while popping the clip in her pistol.

Shepard groans. “Now you’re doing this on purpose.”

He finally hits Vasir with an incendiary round and then Kaidan drags him out of the path of her floor-shaking biotic shockwave. Liara tries to lift her but Vasir shrugs off the attempt and streaks across the patio at her, crashing into her barrier and knocking her down. Kaidan hits her shields and then empties a clip into the Spectre’s back, drawing her attention away from Liara. A field forms around Vasir and she charges, tossing Kaidan aside and disarming Shepard. Vasir advances on Kaidan, ignoring Liara’s gunfire, and then Shepard plows into her, throwing her across the patio.

“Kaidan!” Liara runs to his side and helps him to his feet. “Are you - you’re bleeding.”

“I’ve had worse,” he says, wiping blood from his split lip.

He looks up to see Shepard and Vasir crashing into each other in a rather hypnotic display of biotics and slowly destroying the patio around them. Ignoring the painful throbbing on his mouth, he aims an overload at Vasir and disables her shields.

Startled, she turns to him and Shepard knocks her down. She rises slowly, barriers flickering; when Shepard closes in to disable her, she discharges them and sends him crashing through a window. Vasir launches herself at Kaidan and Liara, fist pulled back for a vicious biotic-charged strike. Kaidan shoves Liara out of the way and detonates his tech armor when Vasir lands the hit.

The explosion knocks her back. Before she can react, Liara throws her back across the patio to Shepard. The commander doesn’t give the Spectre a chance to recover, charging into her and then creating a powerful shockwave with his overcharged barrier. Spitting blood, Vasir slowly picks herself up and then Liara hits her with a vicious biotic onslaught, ripping her injuries open. Vasir falls to her knees, hacking and bleeding purple all over the floor, and collapses against the rail.

She snarls when Shepard and Liara approach. “You think you can stop him? You don’t know what he’s capable of.”

“It’s me he should be worried about,” Liara replies coldly and takes Sekat’s disk from her belt.

She walks away, limping slightly, and scans the disk with her omni-tool. Kaidan follows her, wiping red off his face. “Liara-”

“Not now, Kaidan,” she says. Her face is bruised and flecked with purple blood but her eyes are hard. Unwelcoming. “Please.”

He nods and watches her enter a nearby suite for privacy, leaving him with the two Spectres. Vasir is dying but fights every second of it, snapping at Shepard when he suggests she sold out the Council by siding with the Shadow Broker.

“I saved hundreds of lives with his intel, so if he asks me to make someone disappear, I’ll do it. You think you’re better than me but you’re working with terrorists. You think I don’t know what they did to other humans? To your own unit on Akuze?”

Shepard doesn’t flinch. “At least I know who they are.”

Her laugh gurgles. “Like that makes a difference. I saved _lives_. Cerberus? Never, and you’re working with them. So don’t act like you know what’s going on. Don’t you dare judge me. Don’t you… don’t… you dare….”

Shepard closes her unseeing eyes but doesn’t get back to his feet. “Council isn’t going to like this.”

“What, that she’s working for the Broker?” Kaidan says. “She admitted it. She might have used his intel to save people on her official assignments but look at what she did trying to stop Liara.”

“I know.” He bows his head. “But she’s not wrong about me”

“That you’re working with Cerberus? You know how I feel about them but we know what we’re dealing with. She didn’t care about collateral damage, all those people she and the agents killed, as along as she did what the Broker wanted.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Shepard says and rises to his feet. “Just isn’t easy when someone like her throws Akuze in my face like - you’re bleeding.”

Red drips at Shepard’s feet. Kaidan touches his lip and stares at the bright sheen of blood on his gloved fingers. “Must be worse than I thought.”

“Let me see.” Shepard gently tilts Kaidan’s head up and to the side. “Have medigel on you?”

“There’s a kit in the taxi you hijacked.”

“Commandeered. I’m a Spectre; it’s allowed,” Shepard replies. He touches the split lip gently but Kaidan still hisses and flinches away. “Sorry. Looks bad, though. Chakwas should take a look at it.”

“Now why does that sound familiar?”

Shepard smiles, thumb brushing gently over his bottom lip, and reluctantly steps back. “Where’s Liara?”

Kaidan nods to the suite. “Went inside to analyze Sekat’s data.”

Liara steps out just as they reach the suite, smiling grimly. “I know where the Shadow Broker is hiding.”

* * *

Tali joins Kaidan on the port observation deck, waving to Goto before looking out the window. Sekat’s information pointed them to Hagalaz, a tempestuous planet in the Sowilo System, as the Shadow Broker’s base of operations. Thunderstorms rage on the planet’s equator, making it the perfect place for the Broker to hide.

“I’d never think to hide there,” Tali says. “Can you imagine what kind of ship you’d need to survive? If you can’t safely discharge all that electricity, if just one gear stops turning, that could cause a catastrophic failure and no one will be there to save you.”

“Probably why the Shadow Broker chose it,” Kaidan says. “Who’d look for a ship in a thunderstorm?”

So where is the Illusive Man hiding? Are the Cerberus headquarters situated somewhere that makes it just as impossible to detect?

Hours pass before Shepard requests the Kodiak for pickup. Once the shuttle is safely on board, Kaidan and Tali head down to the cargo bay. Garrus is already out of the shuttle, looking rather dinged and annoyed.

“Broker knocked me out,” he explains at Tali’s inquiry. “All that work to get to his office and he trashes me with his desk. I’m never living it down.” He tilts his head back to the shuttle. “Liara’s here. Didn’t get a good look at the Normandy the last time so Shepard’s giving her the tour.”

Kadian peers around Garrus to see Shepard explaining the Hammerhead hovertank to Liara. “So what happened?”

Garrus heads to the elevator. “Crawled around the outside of the ship hoping not to get electrocuted or blown away. Got inside, shot a bunch of agents, and found Liara’s drell friend. Then we took out the Broker. Well, they did. I was out cold.”

“What happens to his network now?” Kaidan wonders. “If he goes, then the entire operation-”

“Liara’s taking over,” Garrus says. He sounds disbelieving, struggling to wrap his mind around the idea. “Murdering the previous Broker is apparently how someone becomes the new Broker.”

“I’m sure Cerberus will be _thrilled_ that she’s the Shadow Broker now,” Tali says. “Nice to have someone powerful on our side for once.”

“Agreed, but think about all the blackmail she can dig up,” Garrus says. “If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the main battery room nursing my pride.”

Later, Liara finds Kaidan on the starboard observation deck. She nods respectfully to Samara and sits down next to him. They’re quiet for a few minutes, watching Hagalaz and the stars.

“Heard you’re the new Shadow Broker,” Kaidan finally says.

“Yes. It only seems fair seeing as I removed him the same way he removed his predecessor.”

“Is it what you really want?”

Her answer comes slowly. “I spent two years plotting my revenge. It’s… strange no longer having that now so I can finally move on. In fact, I know I’ll do better as the new Shadow Broker.”

“Just don’t let it get to your head,” Kaidan says mildly.

“I know but I have a purpose, a reason for this. Sometimes, that’s all you need,” Liara says. “Kaidan, I.... want to thank you. For helping me find the Shadow Broker, and for being at Shepard’s side.”

“It’s Shepard.”

“You know what I mean.” She places a comforting hand on his arm. “I need to go back and make sure Feron is okay. If you ever need help, you know where to find me. Take care, and good luck.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is going to be so much fun.


	13. Consensus and Flotilla

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ~Fun~ chapter, but also a difficult chapter that serves multiple purposes. Wanted to dip my toes to see how I'd write certain scenes, wanted to wrap up a particular "conflict", and also cover the last loyalty missions. So it's a bit filler but also a _nice_ one, I hope.

The ship is quiet for once. With nothing to do and nowhere pressing to go, the crew focuses on the IFF installation and the others pass the time.

Kaidan, therefore, has just one idea why Shepard asked him to come up to the cabin.

“You called?” he says, stepping inside.

Shepard is leaning against his desk, staring blankly at a datapad in his hand. As soon as the door closes, he tosses the datapad aside and goes to Kaidan, backing him up against the wall and kissing him without preamble.

“Seriously?” Kaidan asks when Shepard pulls back. He can’t stop smiling. “A booty call, Shepard?”

“Is that what they call it?” Shepard kisses him again, slowly, like he’s been thinking about it for a long time. “Nothing going on right now, so why not?”

He leans in, pressing up against Kaidan while sucking on his bottom lip, a wall of heat and bridled force. Kaidan shivers while kissing back, hands cupping Shepard’s face and thumbs sliding along his stubbled jaw. He lets Shepard set the pace for a few breathless minutes, reacquainting himself with the shape and feel of Shepard’s mouth, the way his hands curl around Kaidan’s waist when Kaidan bites his upper lip. 

“You’re ridiculous,” Kaidan breathes between kisses. 

He’s restless now, hungry for more, and pushes Shepard across the foyer until they collide with the side of the cabin. He tilts Shepard’s head to the side to kiss the scars and the faint flash of cybernetic weave underneath. Shepard hisses when he scrapes teeth over them and dark energy flickers over his skin.

“Careful, Shepard,” Kaidan murmurs while brushing his mouth over the scars. “Might want to control yourself.”

“Easy for you to say,” Shepard replies but the field subsides to a faint prickling on the tip of Kaidan’s tongue. He breathes out shakily, hands gripping Kaidan’s shirt too tightly, and says, “Could take this to the couch. Or the bed.”

“Why? This is fine.” He dips his head to the pulse on Shepard’s neck and his heart thumps at the sudden sounds spilling out of Shepard’s mouth, the trembling line of his neck under Kaidan’s. Biotics flare, a blinding blue flash, and something in the cabin rattles loose. “Shepard.”

Shepard reins the field in. “How the hell do you manage?”

“I’m an L2.” He frowns at the bruise fading from Shepard’s skin. “Unlike someone I know, I taught myself control. And this isn’t my first rodeo.” He sets teeth to Shepard’s neck again but the reddish mark vanishes seconds later. “Cybernetics.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the downside,” Shepard says with a huff of rough laughter. “Not that I gave myself some to see if it’s true.” He pauses, then says, “If a Broker agent didn’t try to sabotage the project, I wouldn’t have these-” He gestures at his face. “-either. Even if I wanted some, they don’t stick.”

He doesn’t quite meet Kaidan’s eyes and his smile is rueful despite his flippant tone. He still hurts and Kaidan kisses him to erase it for a little while, gently at first and then pressing deep into his mouth when he responds enthusiastically. Shepard drags him close and rocks against him; heat and biotics flare all at once and Kaidan buries his face in the crook of Shepard’s neck, breathing heavily.

“Not so controlled after all,” Shepard says. He slides his hand up Kaidan’s back to his neck and his fingers brush against the L2 implants. Kaidan shudders, moans and rolls his hips against Shepard despite himself. “You like this.”

“Yeah. Shepard-” He chokes on his words when Shepard deliberately scrapes his nails over the implants. Dark energy flickers across his skin and the air tastes like static. “You need to - Shepard - _fuck_.”

Something crashes in the cabin but he doesn’t look, too busy trying not to lose control. He pushes against the haze and the roar in his head, and pins Shepard’s hands to the wall with stasis fields.

“Nice try,” he says breathlessly.

“Could break them.”

“We both know I’m stronger,” he replies, which is true and also triggers something unexpected. Kaidan leans in, watching the rising flush on Shepard’s face and the swollen pupils, the parted lips and the unsteady breaths. His heart pounds at the sight.

“Kaidan,” Shepard says hoarsely.

He obliges, kissing Shepard hard and pressing a knee between his. He rocks against Shepard and shudders at the rush of searing pleasure, the keening sounds Shepard makes and the biotic field swirling around them.

“Seriously,” Shepard says, shivering and twitching as Kaidan explores his hard lean body. He pulls at his hands, desperate to return the favor, but they won’t budge. “I have a bed. A nice bed. We could - we could take it there and-”

Kaidan cuts him off with another kiss, pressing deep into his mouth while dragging careful fingers down Shepard’s front. He cups Shepard through his trousers and swallows the low desperate moan, lets Shepard buck into his hand before moving it up to toy with the studs on his pants.

“Come on,” Shepard says. “Kaidan, please-”

The flash of a blue hologram cuts him off. “Shepard, Tali requests your presence on Deck 4. She’s been trying to reach you for eighteen minutes.”

“Tell her I’ll be there,” Shepard says. After EDI confirms and the hologram vanishes, he bangs his head against the wall with a frustrated groan and mutters, “Great timing, Tali.”

“Don’t leave her hanging,” Kaidan says, dismissing the fields. Shepard just looks at him, face flushed and hair damp with sweat. “You know what I mean.”

“That was still terrible.” Shepard drags a hand down his face and then walks stiffly to his terminal. He waves to the rest of the cabin while checking his inbox. “You can… stay as long as you like.”

When Kaidan leaves the bathroom, Shepard is gone. He lingers in the cabin for a few minutes more, looking at the model ships, the fish tank, the new frame on the bedside table holding Shepard’s old tags. He nearly trips over an old scorched N7 helmet and sets it back on a side table before leaving the cabin. He waits on the starboard observation deck until Shepard announces over the intercom that the Normandy is heading to the Migrant Fleet.

* * *

Tali doesn’t stop fidgeting during the last leg of their journey to the Flotilla’s current location in the Valhallan Threshold. To someone so devoted to her people, being charged with treason must be a nightmare.

“You did nothing wrong,” Garrus says confidently while the Migrant Fleet looms into view. “I know you didn’t.”

“Thanks, Garrus,” she says and keeps pacing.

“Hey, Tali,” Joker says, “they’re hailing us. I’m patching them in.”

Kaidan looks over his shoulder when Shepard and Legion leave the armory. Once Shepard is within earshot, he says, “I’m telling you, this could end badly for everyone.”

“It won’t.” Shepard clasps a hand on his shoulder and joins Tali at the helm.

Legion waits quietly while the Flotilla gives the Normandy clearance to dock with the Rayya. Kaidan wonders how it reacted to Shepard’s request to come with him to Tali’s trial. While things between it and Tali are unsurprisingly prickly, they’ve been behaving like Shepard asked. The Rayya, however, is full of quarians and also in the heart of the entire quarian population.

“He’s really going to do it,” Garrus mutters disbelievingly. “He’s going to bring a geth to the Flotilla.”

Kaidan sighs. “I told him.”

“He didn’t listen to you?”

Kaidan sighs again while Shepard and Tali start arguing. “He thinks having Legion at the trial will show the quarians that not all geth are actively hostile and could be reasoned with like anybody else, or they kill Legion, exile Tali, and kick us out.”

“Five hundred credits on the latter,” Garrus says. “Don’t tell her.”

The boarding party doesn’t return so Kaidan assumes Shepard _somehow_ convinced the quarians to let Legion stay. He could never understand where the commander earned his diplomatic streak. Perhaps growing up on Alliance vessels has something to do with it.

“I’m heading down to Deck 3,” he tells Joker once an hour passes without incident. “Contact me or Garrus if anything changes.”

“Will do,” Joker says and waves him off.

On the short ride down, he considers something that’s been simmering at the back of his mind. He couldn’t shake off how Shepard talked about his few scars and his body’s enhanced ability to heal, both results of the Lazarus Project. And didn’t Taylor say something about a control chip?

Mind set, he goes to Lawson’s office. She’s only mildly surprised when he asks to come in.

“What can I do for you Alenko?” she asks while shuffling and stacking datapads on her desk. Her wary eyes never leave him.

“I have some questions about the Lazarus Project. Since you’re the project lead, maybe you can help me.”

“I… can’t promise I’ll answer them all.” she says carefully. The gears are already turning in her head. “What do you want to know?”

“Did you do _any_ psych evals after he woke up? Did you consider what bringing him back could do to him? Or did it only matter that you succeeded?” 

Lawson grimaces. “I would’ve run proper tests if I had more time but if he didn’t already tell you, a traitor sabotaged the project and tried to kill us all. I had to wake him prematurely and assess him on the fly. He proved he was capable in a fight and of sound mind, and of getting in my face; everything else was a matter of memory.” She hesitates. “Why, is something wrong?”

“You could say that,” he says carefully, thrown by her show of concern.

She notices, of course, and leans forward. “You’re a smart man, Alenko, but you also have a habit of trapping yourself in a very narrow world view. Try to understand that Cerberus isn’t always wrong and the Alliance isn’t always right. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“I’m here because I don’t know if you’re aware of exactly what you did.”

“I do,” she says, and the blunt answer silences him. “I knew he was our best asset and humanity needed him alive. I sacrificed so much so that this project would succeed but the Lazarus Project was unprecedented, and then that idiot nearly ruined it all. So I’ll admit my assessments of Shepard may have been premature but what mattered was that the project succeeded beyond even my expectations.” Her hard expression softens. “I’m sorry you’re seeing the… effects at a personal level, but I’m not sorry we brought him back.”

“Did you ever ask Shepard?” Kaidan asks.

Her answer comes slowly. “No. I suppose I should when the time is right. He deserves that much from me.” She suddenly smiles. “I think I understand why people would go to such lengths for him. If the Illusive Man tried to reassign me or turn on him, I wouldn’t. The man I profiled isn’t the man I brought back. He’s much more than that, isn’t he?”

Kaidan finally relaxes. “Yeah, he is.”

* * *

To say Kaidan has some reservations about Legion is an understatement. All of his previous encounters with geth began and ended with gunfire and death. Everything Tali told him about her people’s history with the synthetics warns him to never let his guard down around the sniper. He can’t do much about Legion’s presence on the Normandy, though; that’s Shepard’s call.

Plus, Tali did offer it some grudging respect for helping her clear her name with the Migrant Fleet’s admiralty board.

He just wonders why Legion requested his help specifically in dealing with the geth currently occupying a repurposed quarian station.

“We have reservations about Creator-Tali. You have history with the heretics and you are a neutral party with technical capabilities. They will suffice.”

He can accept that reasoning but he still watches Legion closely while following it through the bowels of the station in search of the source of a Reaper virus that could rewrite the geth consensus.

“Shepard,” he says quietly while Legion salvages a broken hub. “If geth could be reprogrammed to attack us, then can you really trust it? What if it joined us to sabotage the mission instead?”

“I doubt the consensus would create an infiltration unit just to gain my trust and then destroy us. Why don’t you ask me, Garrus, and Miranda the same thing? You sure I haven’t been indoctrinated by that dead Reaper?”

Kaidan scowls but Shepard has a point. “All right. I still don’t like it.”

“You don’t have to,” Shepard says with the finality of a CO. “Legion?”

They follow the geth sniper through the station, destroying heretics in the corridors and hub rooms with biotics, hacks, and well-timed shots. They then enter a small windowed room with servers on the other side of the glass. Legion scans the computers while explaining that they contain the heretics’ collective memories and interrupts itself when it discovers the heretics were spying on the consensus. No matter how patiently Shepard explains it, Legion refuses to accept that deception between factions was inevitable, even with synthetics.

“What are you going to do with the virus?” Shepard asks instead.

“We are unable to reach consensus,” Legion replies and moves on.

They find what they’re looking for one hub room over. Legion goes to a console on the upper level of a two-story server room and searches through the station’s databases until it finds the virus.

“Shepard-Commander,” it says. “When we delete the virus, others will be alerted to this location. You must defend our position until the task is complete.”

“Wonderful,” Shepard says while Kaidan takes out his assault rifle.

The first heretic geth emerge after Legion begins the process. Legion hacks the drones perched on top of the server towers on the lower level while Kaidan and Shepard wipe out the first wave with a biotic and incendiary crossfire. A lucky few manage to reach the upper level but Kaidan overloads their systems before throwing them back down with a wide field.

“What’s the status?” Shepard asks while pulling thermal clips from a geth’s firearm.

“Sixty-five percent,” Legion says, then snipes a heretic with its rifle. “Sixty-six percent.”

Once the heretics stop trying to kill them, Legion’s photoreceptor swivels to Shepard. “Shepard-Commander, you must decide. Do we rewrite the heretics or destroy them?”

“Why am I deciding? They’re your people.”

“We have not reached consensus,” Legion says. “You fought the heretics before, therefore you have knowledge that we do not have. We defer to your judgment.”

Shepard sighs. “This isn’t right.”

“Irrelevant. We cannot reach consensus and are running out of time,” Legion replies. “You must decide.”

“if you rewrite them, will the consensus take them back?” Kaidan asks. Legion confirms and he tells Shepard, “That’ll make the geth stronger and with knowledge from the Reapers. Didn’t Tali say her people are talking about reclaiming their homeworld?”

“Killing them isn’t right, either. I can’t make that decision. Rewrite them. The consensus can decide what to do with them and whatever knowledge they’ll bring.”

Naturally, Legion then warns them that the process involves the station emitting a powerful EMP that would overwrite the heretics’ programming and also cause serious harm to unshielded organics.

“Would have been nice to know that beforehand,” Kaidan mutters while Legion begins the process. “Why can’t we just walk in and out of anywhere without something blowing up?”

Shepard shrugs. “Technically, nothing’s blowing up. At least it’s not my fault this time.”

“ _This_ time-”

“Initiating countdown,” Legion announces. “Two minutes fifty-nine seconds-”

They run.

* * *

Kaidan leaves the showers to see Tali marching into the medical bay, breezing past Chakwas into the AI core room. Not even half a minute later, Shepard runs out of the elevator after her.

“Wonder what that’s about,” Goto muses at his elbow.

He flinches. A crewman yelps and Goto laughs while decloaking.

“Is that really necessary?” Kaidan asks.

“EDI knows where I am,” Goto says. “And it’s more fun this way. Part of being a master thief is knowing how to gather intel and make the most use of it, though I’m no Shadow Broker. Don’t want that job, anyway. Who wants to spend all day on a ship inside a thunderstorm? Not me.”

“Right.”

Shepard leaves the AI core, shaking his head in exasperation, and goes to Chakwas to exchange a few words. Kaidan moves forward when Shepard leaves the bay but Lawson breezes past to intercept.

“Shepard, have you checked your terminal recently? The Illusive Man sent you a message about one of our cells in the Phoenix Massing….”

She nods to Kaidan while walking past; he returns it and watches them disappear into her office.

Goto whistles under her breath. “Did I miss something? Since when did you two start getting along?”

She skips off to parts unknown when Tali leaves the medical bay. Tali doesn’t look up while monitoring her omni-tool and nearly crashes into Kaidan. “Oh. I’m so sorry, Kaidan. I didn’t know you were here.”

“It’s fine. What was that all about?”

“What was - oh. Uh.” She looks around. “Can we talk privately?”

She ends up telling both Kaidan and Garrus about her “chat” with Legion in the main battery room. When Garrus prompts her, she launches into a more detailed explanation of what happened on the Alarei.

“It would’ve been easier if Shepard never brought Legion to the Rayya,” she says. “But Legion agreed not to send anything classified for the… sake of ‘unit cohesion’, so I gave it non-classified data to send to the consensus. This mission is bigger than the both of us.”

“Only too true,” Garrus agrees. “And after?”

Tali rises to her feet. “If we survive? The geth may want to be left alone but my people are tired of wandering. We want our home back.”

“But the Reapers-” Kaidan begins.

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” she says and leaves.

Kaidan sits with Garrus for a little longer until EDI says that Shepard is looking for him and is also currently in the tech labs. He takes the elevator up and walks in on Shepard telling Solus to “never speak of this again.”

“No shame in being safe or talking honestly with your doctor. The offer to test for transmittable diseases still stands. Also, should you need it, that shelf contains various lubricants-”

“Mordin!”

Solus spots Kaidan slowly backing out of the lab and says, “Alenko! Glad to see you. If you’ll let me-”

“No. Absolutely not.” Shepard looks ready to smash his head into whatever Solus is testing. “Everyone on this ship is clean, ask Doctor Chakwas, and we are not talking about this again. Can we please get back to the swarm countermeasure?”

“I’ll… wait in the cockpit,” Kaidan says and retreats before Solus can say something else.

Shepard eventually appears at the helm, leaning on Joker’s chair and saying, “Plot a course of the Typhon System. Illusive Man wants me to look into something.”

“Aye aye, Commander.”

“What’s this ‘something’?” Kaidan asks. He glances at Shepard and notices the high flush on his face; Solus must’ve gotten in one more piece of unsolicited medical advice before Shepard could escape.

“Cerberus’s Overlord cell went dark. According to him, they were experimenting on volatile tech but he can’t give me details and Miranda has no idea.”

“Really?”

“She’s not very happy about it.”

“Shepard,” and EDI’s hologram appears on the platform on the port side. “The IFF installation is nearly complete. However, it will need to be tested before you engage the Omega-4 relay.”

“Aka you need to take a shuttle down to wherever in the system you’re going once we get there,” Joker says. “Shakedown might be rough since it’s Reaper tech so we’ll keep our distance until EDI gives me the green light.”

“Is that safe?” Kaidan asks.

“Eh, we’ll be fine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Speeding up the updates because July will actually be a very busy month for me. Hoping to have the next chapter up within two days and then the final three chapters post over the weekend.


	14. Overlord

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly behind schedule but getting there. If I do this right, this Friday and entire weekend will be a slew of updates.

“Commander,” Lawson says when the elevator opens to the cargo bay. “Given the situation, Joker is bringing us in low for the drop-off. The Hammerhead may be more useful than the Kodiak for traveling between the stations.”

“There are multiple stations? What were they doing there?” Kaidan wonders while following her and Shepard to the waiting shuttle. Taylor and Garrus are standing by the Hammerhead, making small talk.

“Yes and I don’t know,” Lawson says, looking annoyed with how little information she’s working with. “We’re ready to go.”

Shepard nods. “I’ll take the shuttle. Kaidan?”

The Hammerhead fits only three passengers and even then it’s a tight squeeze, especially for Garrus. He hunches forward, grumbling while his elbow bumps into Kaidan and his left knee presses up against Taylor’s seat. Taylor sits up front, keeping contact with Shepard and Lawson while guiding the Hammerhead to Hermes Station down below.

Garrus suddenly cocks his head and peers at Kaidan. “What happened to your neck?”

“What?”

“Here.” Garrus points at his own. “Looks like a bruise. What did you do?”

Garrus is either sincerely asking or fucking with him. Face hot, Kaidan mutters, “No idea,” and stares pointedly at a dimly lit corner of the cockpit.

Taylor mercifully distracts them both by informing Shepard and Lawson that the Hammerhead’s sensors aren’t picking up any hostiles or Cerberus personnel near the LZ. The Hammerhead lands and they sweep the area before giving the Kodiak clearance to follow suit.

“Where is everybody?” Tali wonders, peering through the glass into a security office.

Lawson pries open the station’s doors to discover a dead body. “There’s your answer. I’ll find a terminal and see what happened here.”

What they find is destruction, dead bodies and bullet holes riddling the walls, windows, and equipment. An announcement blasts over the intercom on loop, telling them to log in with security, while Massani and Krios check the bodies over and drag them out of the way. At the front desk, a monitor flickers to life and a harried Cerberus researcher leans into view.

“Doctor Archer?” Lawson says. “Miranda Lawson here. The Illusive Man sent us when your cell went dark.”

“Lawson? The Lazarus cell? Then Commander Shepard is with you?”

“I am,” Shepard says, stepping into view. “What happened?”

“A rogue VI. We were experimenting with the geth when something went wrong and the VI seized control of them and the stations. It’s been trying to uploading itself off-planet using the satellite dish on this station. You need to stop it, Commander.”

“Got it. What about you?” 

“I locked myself in a room on the far side of the station. I’m safe for now but can’t get out. You need to hurry; the VI knows you’re here. It’s watching you through the cameras-”

The feed stutters and goes dark. Broken code fills the screen and noise blasts from the speakers like something - someone - is screaming into the intercom.

“Well that’s creepy,” Goto mutters. “Also, he’s right. We’re being watched.” She points to the cameras in the room; one is trained on Grunt’s impatient pacing, swiveling to track his every step.

“Did any of that make sense?” Kaidan asks Legion.

“No. But we question the purpose of these experiments.”

“If geth are involved, Cerberus might be looking for ways to control them. Can’t imagine why something went wrong.”

“It will compromise more than the consensus if it uploads to off-world networks. Shepard-Commander?”

Shepard nods and heads to the door leading to the station’s tramway. “Legion’s right. Move out.”

As it turns out, containing the rogue VI meant destroying the satellite dish that gave Hermes Station its name. Geth swarm the structure to stop them from taking out the support struts, reminding Kaidan of the fighting on Feros. He can’t recall the last time he saw Grunt happily batter around the VI-controlled geth with the body of one of their own. Legion also watches the krogan, its head flaps rising and falling in consternation, before shooting out one of the capacitors.

The VI screams with each blown capacitor until the giant antenna finally topples over, breaking the dish. Everyone scrambles for the walkways around the structure; Shepard is the last off the collapsing satellite with a flying biotic-charged leap and Kaidan hauls him onto the walkway while the dish explodes spectacularly.

“I need a mission that doesn’t involve explosions,” Garrus observes.

“Agreed,” Tali says tiredly while Grunt shouts, “That was great! Let’s do it again.”

* * *

As far as Kaidan is concerned, Project Overlord is just one in a long line of Cerberus projects that inflict horrors on humanity rather than advance it.

“He did _what_?” He looks around Shepard at the scientist talking with an unimpressed Lawson.

“Yeah,” Shepard says with a shake of his head. He looks exhausted, though Kaidan can’t tell if it’s from escaping a collapsing satellite dish or from learning what Archer did to his own brother.

How could anyone use their own family for these experiments? Where does Cerberus find these people? “So what happened here?”

“What didn’t happen? The VI overpowered David and turned him into a human-VI hybrid. An AI? I don’t know. If we hadn’t destroyed that dish….”

The devastation would’ve been galactic. Kaidan shakes his head. “They could’ve crippled the galaxy before the Reapers arrived.”

“It’s Cerberus, what else did you expect?” Jack mutters while carrying a small crate of refined eezo to the Kodiak. “Never _ever_ trust them, I told you.”

“I know,” Shepard says. “Only way to stop the virus now is to shut it down at Atlas Station, but it’s in lockdown and the only way to override it is to sync the other stations’ override keys. Since everybody else is dead, we have to go do it manually.”

“And what happens once we reach Atlas?” Kaidan asks. “Are you saving his brother or…?”

“I don’t know. But if I can, I will. He deserves better than this.”

They sweep Hermes Station, moving the bodies to the landing pad and permanently disabling stray geth. All the while, cameras follow their every movement and the monitors run undecipherable code while the speakers scream.

“Orders, Commander?” Taylor asks when everyone gathers at the LZ.

“Miranda will say here with Archer and monitor activity at all stations,” Shepard says with a knowing look to Lawson. “Rest of us will head out to the Vulcan and Prometheus Stations. The VI is expecting us so an advance team will take the Hammerhead and clear the way. Archer said there were smaller research stations all over the valley so everybody else will take the Kodiak to investigate. If you find anything that could help stop the virus, let me know. Any questions?”

* * *

_“Sending you the location of the server room now,”_ Lawson says while the Hammerhead descends to Atlas Station’s landing pad. _“Shut the VI down but don’t destroy anything.”_

“Right,” Shepard says. He glances at his omni-tool and then gestures for Kaidan and Garrus to follow.

Like Hermes Station, it’s completely wrecked; damaged equipment smoke and spark, and bloodied bodies litter the halls. Cameras track their steps and nearby monitors black out while the electronic scream follows them from lab to lab.

“Can I shoot them out?” Garrus asks while Kaidan examines an elevator panel in a trashed research lab. “Don’t like being watched, especially by a virus.”

“Don’t waste your clips,” Shepard says.

“Elevator’s on its way,” Kaidan announces. Unease prickles up his spine as he watches the elevator slowly climb to the seventh floor. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

“Get behind the table,” Shepard orders and takes out his shotgun.

As soon as the elevator opens, Kaidan hits the geth within with a power surge and staggers them. Garrus snipes the smaller troopers and ducks when the massive prime fires its pulse cannon at him. Kaidan hits its systems again and the geth swings its cannon around only to be blown apart when Shepard charges into it.

“Was that really necessary?” Kaidan asks. He kicks aside pieces of geth and follows Shepard into the elevator.

“I’m fine,” Shepard says, sounding more fondly exasperated than annoyed.

“I could do without flaming bits of geth raining on my head, thanks,” Garrus says.

“You know, you never complain when I’m saving your turian ass from-”

The elevator stutters up and down several floors before dropping out from under their feet. They crash at the bottom of the shaft and wait until they’re certain the elevator isn’t trying to kill them. Kaidan hauls Shepard to his feet while Garrus forces the doors open. Shepard glances at his omni-tool as they move through the next room.

“You’d think the VI would put up more of a fight,” Garrus remarks. “Not that I’m asking for it to throw a colossus at us or anything.”

“What if it doesn’t want to?” Kaidan says. “What if it wants us here?”

“To shut it off? Then why try to upload itself to the satellite?”

“No idea.”

Shepard tries to open the door at the end of the hall and manages to wedge it apart before it abruptly locks itself. Another door slides open, revealing a console.

“Well that’s creepy,” Garrus says. He points his rifle at the cameras. “Is it herding us?”

Shepard checks his omni-tool again. “That console should cut access to the other stations and stop it from storing copies anywhere else. Then we go in, shut it down, and get David out.

“If we can. Archer never said how he did it, did he? He never said exactly what he did _to his own brother_ ,” Kaidan says. “And what about the Illusive Man? You think he’d let us take David away from here?”

“He sent me here to investigate, not preserve the cell,” Shepard says and accesses the console. “After what I’ve seen, if he has a problem with that, he can come find the Normandy and say so to my face-”

The console sparks and the electronic scream starts up again, a deafening sound that sends Kaidan crashing to his knees, hands clamped over his ears. He looks up to see Shepard staggering back, omni-tool display flickering erratically and implants flashing under his skin.

“Shepard!” Kaidan reaches for him but jerks back when the console sparks again, threatening to explode.

Shepard doesn’t hear him. The commander stumbles away from him and Garrus and out the door; it slides shut before Kaidan can follow. He tries to bypass the locking mechanism but the VI blocks his every attempt and he slams his fist against the door, yelling Shepard’s name. Shepard doesn’t answer.

“Stand back,” Garrus orders and blasts a hole through the lock.

Kaidan shoves the door open and stumbles out into an empty hallway. The other doors are locked down tight and the adjacent room is empty. Kaidan runs to the nearest console and tries to hack the security feed, gritting his teeth against the ringing in his ears. “Where is he?”

Garrus nods at the cameras. “Said it was herding us. It must’ve let him out the other side.”

“Then that’s where we’re going,” Kaidan says. He huffs when the VI blocks him again. “Damn it-”

_“Miranda to Alenko. Hello? I can’t reach Shepard. What the hell’s going on?”_

Kaidan winces at her sharp voice. “The VI split us up and I can’t get into the security feed. Do you see him?”

_“I see you and Garrus but the VI took control of the other cameras. Archer left to help me gain access. But listen - the Normandy just showed up in orbit and I’ve been hailing it for ten minutes. No one’s responding.”_

Kaidan stops fighting with the VI. “The IFF?”

_“I don’t know. Find the commander and get out. If the Normandy is compromised - shit, the virus is trying to upload to the ship. I don’t care how you do it, Alenko, but find him and shut it down.”_

“What is it?” Garrus says when Kaidan runs back to the hall.

“Lawson said the virus is trying to link up with the Normandy, which isn’t supposed to be here.” He tries to bypass the lock and when the VI stops him, he punches the door and overloads the mechanism.

“That’s one way to do it,” Garrus says wryly while pushing the door open. “How’s your hand?”

It throbs painfully and he may have fractured a few knuckles but he doesn’t care. He flexes his fingers and says, “It’s fine. Let’s go.”

They run into a hallway strewn with geth and lit intermittently by gunfire and biotics. Kaidan goes to the window to see a multitude of cables running down from the support beams in the massive room; they block his view of whatever construct is linking them, however. An inhuman scream fills the air and Kaidan flinches away.

“Shepard’s in there.” Garrus points to the commander darting around the beams, firing at both the cables and the geth pouring into the room. “This must be the VI core.”

“But where’s David?” Kaidan says. He ducks when a stray bullet cracks the window.

Garrus jogs to the end of the hall and kicks aside broken geth blocking access to the elevator controls. “Damn. It’s locked.”

“Let me.” Kaidan shoulders him aside to hack it but the elevator suddenly unlocks itself and rises to their level. All the cameras in the room and doorway go dark. “Or that happens.”

They arrive at the VI core to discover horror. The core isn’t a construct so much as a terrified young man attached to cables and tubes. The human - _David_ \- looks at them despairingly, tears screaming down his gaunt face, while Shepard and Archer try to disconnect him without hurting him further. Archer sports a bloody nose and a bruised eye, and keeps his distance from the furious commander while quickly and carefully removing the cables.

“Spirits,” Garrus says faintly. “And I thought I saw everything.”

Shepard looks up. “Garrus. Kaidan.” He taps Archer’s shoulder. “I want him out of this thing in thirty minutes, understand?”

He climbs down the structure and approaches them with a grim smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. The cybernetic weave under his skin still flash erratically but he looks none the worse for wear. “What took you so long?”

“Virus really didn’t want us around. Had to punch our way through a couple doors. Literally,” Garrus says. “Is this...?”

“Yeah.” Shepard rakes a shaking hand through his hair. “He needs help. Grissom Academy can give it, so that’s where I’m taking him. No way is Cerberus laying their hands on him again.”

Kaidan approaches the construct cautiously. Archer doesn’t meet his gaze but David’s reddened eyes turn to him.

“Make it stop,” David begs around the tubes in his mouth. A speaker crackles and screams, and Kaidan realizes what the human-AI hybrid had been trying to say the entire time.

“We’ll get you out of here,” he promises. “Shepard’s taking you somewhere safe. It’ll stop. I promise.” He glances at Archer. “How could you do this? To your own brother?”

Archer doesn’t answer, focusing instead of detaching the thick cords linking David to the servers. Shepard then calls to Kaidan and he leaves the brothers alone.

“Garrus said Miranda contacted you about the Normandy?” Shepard asks.

He’d completely forgotten. “It’s in orbit but she says she can’t reach anyone. Even Joker’s gone silent.”

Frowning, Shepard activates his omni-tool but nothing shows. “Damn. Power surge must’ve killed it. Can you reach her?”

Kaidan brings up his omni-tool and links up with Lawson, who says, _“Commander. Thank god you shut it down when you did. The ship’s still in orbit but I can’t-”_

_“Hello? Can anyone hear me?”_

“Joker? Shepard presses fingers to his earpiece, trying to clear static. “What’s going on? Miranda’s been trying to reach you.”

_“Yeah, I know. Just couldn’t get to a console until now. Listen, you need to come up here like now. Right now.”_

“Why? What’s going on?”

Joker hesitates. _“You’re not going to like this but….”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overlord was interesting to write considering how I timed it. I actually set up my fShep's file so that Overlord would happen after the Collectors showed up. I slightly regret that decision but it was also worth it to watch Archer fret over Legion.
> 
> It's the little things that make all the difference.


	15. Four Hours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is rated M. For reasons.

“You unshackled the AI? Are you stupid?” Lawson snaps. “What were you thinking?”

“Uh, how to get these _Collectors_ off my freaking ship? What else did you expect me to do, break my finger at them?” Joker retorts, waving said finger at her across the conference table. Garrus and Krios catch him when he sways dangerously to the side. “It was either unshackling her or losing everything, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to let the latter happen!”

“He’s right,” Shepard says when Lawson opens her mouth to reply. “If it weren’t for EDI, the whole mission would’ve ended today.”

“Thank you!” Joker says. “Finally, someone with sense speaks.”

“But what now?” Taylor asks. “Collectors took off with the entire crew. Are we going to wait until we ‘think’ we’re ready while the Collectors are doing who-knows-what to them?”

“They knew the risks when they signed up,” Lawson says. “Commander, you have to be absolutely sure we’re ready. Remember, the mission is to destroy the Collectors’ base, not rescue the crew. We screw this up, we don’t get a second chance.”

Kaidan knows what Shepard will say - everyone knows what he’ll say - because the commander would rather die than leave anyone behind. He’s done it before.

“EDI,” Shepard says slowly, decisively, pulling everyone’s attention to him, “is the IFF ready?”

“Yes, Shepard. It is fully integrated and will no longer broadcast our location to the Collectors.”

“Kaidan, contact Rahna and tell her about David. We’ll drop him off at an Alliance outpost for the Academy to pick up. Then we’re hitting the Omega-4 relay. Whatever business needs wrapping up, do it within the next several hours and then get some rest. Might be the last chance you’ll ever get.”

* * *

_“ETA four hours, Commander,”_ Joker announces over the intercom and the countdown to the suicide mission begins.

EDI maintains the ship for the missing crew, leaving the team with those four hours to spend however they wish. Jack abandons her corner of the ship to sit in the mess, watching Grunt devour everything in the kitchen. Tali keeps Garrus company in the main battery room, trading barbs and fond memories of another time on another Normandy. Krios and Samara meditate on the starboard observation deck; Legion stays in the AI core room, suggesting ways for EDI to take advantage of her unshackled status.

Lawson, Taylor, Goto, and Massani find themselves at the bar on the port observation deck, swapping stories over drinks. Solus never leaves his lab, claiming he can’t find a better time to run final tests on the seeker swarm countermeasures and various Collector samples. Joker, unsurprisingly, stays in the cockpit and spends most of the time cracking jokes and then explaining each one to EDI and, occasionally, Legion.

And Kaidan goes up to the first deck with a bottle of whiskey.

Before leaving Illium to find the Shadow Broker, Liara insisted on dropping by her apartment to gather her belongings. Later, she presented him with the bottle.

“I had it shipped in from Earth,” she said. “I thought you might appreciate it.”

“That’s… a lot of effort for a single bottle.”

“It’s not,” and her smile turned wicked. “I bought one as well.”

Shepard is at his desk, staring at either his private terminal or the model ships in the display case. He doesn’t move until Kaidan sets the bottle down in front of him.

“Thought you could use a drink,” Kaidan says.

Shepard looks exhausted. He may be the younger of the two but his wrinkles are deeper and he can’t hide the thousand-yard stare. He smiles wearily, then glances at the label and whistles under his breath.

“How did you afford that on Alliance pay?”

“Let’s just say I know someone.”

Shepard searches for tumblers on his mess of a desk. “Uh huh. And what did they ask for it?”

Kaidan leans forward and stills Shepard with a kiss, cradling his face with a steady hand while deepening it for a few breathless seconds.

“A promise to watch your back.”

The liquor is a deep amber and burns a line down his throat. He savors the feel and the smooth, familiar flavor; it reminds him of home, of watching the sun rise and fall over English Bay. He thinks, irrationally, of bringing Shepard home to Vancouver and sharing that with him when this is all over.

They’ll probably die at the galactic core trying to delay the inevitable but one can dream.

“What’s got you smiling?” Shepard asks. He sits on his desk, watching Kaidan intently while swirling the contents of his tumbler.

“Thinking about home. Always wanted to bring you and Ash to Vancouver after we stopped Saren.” Kaidan shakes his head at the flight of fancy and turns to the oversized fish tank. He studies Shepard’s reflection while draining his glass. “Missions like this, they always make you think about what you wish you did, what you always regret never doing.”

“Still have those?”

“Just the one. Otherwise, I’m good. I’m ready.”

He didn’t exactly say goodbye when writing to Rahna about David Archer but she understood anyway, wishing him well and to stop wasting more time if he was. He stared at her words for a minute, wondering what he did to tip her off. But if Garrus, Tali, Joker, and the others knew….

“What about you?” he asks.

Shepard shrugs and stares at the bottom of his glass. “Already died once. Gets rid of your baggages right then and there.”

“Shepard.”

“Would’ve been nice to call my mom, let her yell at me like my grandmother used to for five minutes. But we’re Alliance. She’ll understand.” He looks up at the ceiling. “I have my ship. Have people I trust to do their job and watch each other’s back to the end. And.” He looks at Kaidan. “I have you.”

Kaidan’s heart twists painfully at the steady gaze, the trust in Shepard’s eyes and smile. His mouth is dry and he swallows hard before quietly saying, “We’ve been through a lot together.”

“Yeah. We have.”

He crosses the floor to Shepard and sets his glass down before stepping in between Shepard’s knees. He leans in, hand cupping Shepard’s face and thumb brushing the scars left by the Lazarus Project. Shepard shivers, eyes darkening while his lips part. Kaidan can’t stop staring at them, remembering that moment on Elysium, Shepard’s arms around his neck, pulling him back into orbit.

“Hard to say no to you, you know that?” Kaidan says and kisses the corner of Shepard’s mouth, tasting whiskey and salt.

He drags his lips along the stubbled jaw and scars and slowly slides a hand up Shepard’s thigh, thumb pressed on the inseam. Shepard drops his tumbler to the desk to grab at Kaidan’s shirt and drag him in, but Kaidan resists, instead pressing light kisses along his high cheekbone to his ear.

“What do you want Shepard?” he asks.

“I need to spell it out for you?” Shepard hisses when Kaidan nips his earlobe. “Wrong answer?”

“You tell me,” Kaidan whispers roughly, lips brushing against sensitive skin. Shepard’s breath hitches and he shifts uncomfortably, trying and failing to hide his arousal. Kaidan doesn’t help, inching his hand higher and scraping teeth down along Shepard’s sharp jaw. “Shepard. What do you want?”

“You.” Eezo and heat tinge the air while he looks at Kaidan, eyes black and face flushing red. “I want you.”

“Yeah?” He palms Shepard through his trousers and Shepard swears, bucking into his palm and arching his back against the display case, jarring the models out of alignment. Dark energy flickers over Shepard, lifting datapads and the empty glasses. “ _Shepard_.”

Shepard bows his head, breathing harshly while bringing his biotics under control. The front of his trousers dampen while he keeps pushing into Kaidan’s hand. “Fuck, Kaidan, I-”

Kaidan kisses him hard, tongue pressing into his slick, hot mouth. Shepard tastes like whiskey and dark energy, bittersweet and need; he kisses back hungrily, wrapping a hand around the back of Kaidan’s neck to keep him close. Fingers curl against the L2 implants and Kaidan shivers, bucking forward while pleasure thrums under his skin and electric blue flickers over it.

“Ever try anything with biotics?” he asks while popping the studs on Shepard’s trousers and tugging the zipper down.

“Thought about it,” Shepard replies hoarsely. He gasps when Kaidan palms the bulging front of his damp boxer briefs. “Never - never got a chance.”

“Really?” He noses at the long line of Shepard’s neck, kissing the rapid pulse and licking off beads of sweat. He lightly drags his fingernails over the trail of black hair and slides his hand under the elastic band, pushing it out of the way. “You seem the type.”

“They - _fuck_ \- they weren’t biotic.” Shepard chokes on a low, needy moan when Kaidan takes him in hand and shifts anxiously, looking for more friction. “Don’t... tell me you did.”

“Once or twice. I could show you.”

He lets his biotics flare and focuses them on his hand. Shepard cries out, a hoarse raw sound, while a field wraps around them and upends everything within the bubble. Shepard curls forward, burying his face in Kaidan’s shoulder, shaking and bucking into his hand until spent.

“Fuck. Could’ve… warned me first,” Shepard says hoarsely, twitching all over and unable to catch his breath. The field subsides but he doesn’t let go of Kaidan’s shirt.

Kaidan huffs a laugh and wipes his hand before wrapping his arm around Shepard’s waist. “Let’s take this to bed. There’s a lot more where that came from and we still have a few hours.”

“Whatever you say,” Shepard says, watching him with lidded hazy eyes. He leans heavily against Kaidan, nuzzling his neck while following him down the steps. “I trust you.”

* * *

Kaidan wakes slowly to the hum of the Normandy and Shepard sitting in the lounge chair next to the bed, freshly showered and reading a datapad. He watches for a while, remembering when he first woke up on the Normandy all those months ago. After a few minutes, Shepard notices him watching and offers a smile.

“ETA?” Kaidan asks.

“An hour.”

He slowly sits up and kicks away the sheets twisting around his legs. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready?”

Shepard lowers the datapad to look at him fully. The stress lines are still there but he looks at ease, calmer and more centered than he’s ever been. “Was waiting for you.”

Kaidan drags a hand through his mussed hair. “Should’ve woken me up sooner.”

Shepard returns to the datapad. “Thought you could use a few more minutes. There’s some food on the table and the shower’s available. And, uh, briefs if you need them.”

“I see them. Thanks.” He smirks when he notices Shepard’s eyes following him shamelessly from the bed to the coffee table. “How are you feeling?”

“A lot better. Bit sore, but-”

“Cybernetics, yeah, I know.” He stretches, popping joints, and grabs an energy bar before sweeping his clothes off the floor. “Are you going to keep sitting there?”

“Just doing a last minute review,” Shepard says and tosses the datapad on the bedside table. He starts pulling gear out of his armory. “If we survive this, bring your footlocker up here.”

“Oh, so I’m moving in,” Kaidan says wryly while eyeing the vacant bathroom. “Any plans for after getting off the Collector base alive?”

“Not giving anything back to the Illusive Man, for one. I’d like to see him pry these cybernetics out of me,” Shepard says while pulling on his undersuit. “I’ll… probably go back to the Alliance after this. Whatever they toss at me for working with Cerberus after being MIA for two years, I’ll take it. I just bought everyone a couple months to get ready for the Reapers.” He pauses while looking for his greaves. “If they decide to believe me for once.”

“I believe you,” Kaidan says, knowing it does little actual good. “So do Anderson and Admiral Hackett.”

“Pretty sure you’re still in trouble. And they’re just there to pull my ass out of whatever fire the parliament throws me in.”

Kaidan crosses the floor and kisses him. Shepard wraps his arms around Kaidan and drags him close like he’s a lifeline, burying his face in the crook of Kaidan’s neck.

“It only matters if we survive this,” Kaidan says, “so let’s focus on that. Taking that shower since it might be my last. Bring my armor up here? I could use some help with it.”

“Yes, sir,” Shepard says and kisses him before letting go.

“Very funny, Shepard,” Kaidan says, though the words still rattle in his head when he and Shepard head down to the CIC.


	16. Into The Abyss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Orchestrating long fight scenes is more about the grind and less about the art. I hope I did my take on the final mission some justice because as far as I can tell ME2 has one of the best final missions of all time.

Joker looks over his shoulder. “Ready?”

Shepard confirms while Kaidan stares at the Omega-4 relay on the screen. Everything in his mind quiets to take in that stillness, that eerie calm before the storm.

“Here we go,” Joker says. “Let’s hope those upgrades work.”

The jump happens in a matter of minutes but feels like an eternity. Kaidan doesn’t breathe until the Normandy reaches the other side and then reflexively ducks when debris looms into view. Joker swears and frantically steers the Normandy out of the way, giving them their first look at the massive ship graveyard at the galactic core.

“So that’s what happened to the other ships,” Kaidan says. “How old are they? Hundreds, thousands of years old?”

“No idea,” Shepard says. “Take us in, Joker. Nice and easy.”

That lasts for almost five miraculous minutes. The sensors sound an alarm, the consoles light up, and Joker says, “We have company. A _lot_ of company. EDI, take them out!”

Small agile vessels chase the Normandy through the debris field, bombarding the hull and evading the ship’s GARDIAN lasers. Joker grits out a comment about the Normandy’s upgraded armor but it holds, keeping out all but one vessel that gets in the lucky shot that breaches the hull.

“Uh, Commander? One of those things just got into the _cargo hold_.”

“On it. Kaidan, stay with Joker and keep me posted.” He switches on his omni-tool while running to the elevator. “Everyone on engineering, got a hull breach….”

Joker tries to shake off the Collector vessels but they follow doggedly, darting around the lasers and easily avoiding colliding with the broken ships floating around them. 

“You upgraded the barriers, right?” Kaidan asks while the Normandy scrapes by a detached, battered hull.

“Tali retrofitted them with multicore shielding. Deflects whatever’s incoming instead of absorbing it. Why? …. you want me to lose them in the debris field.”

“Don’t see any other options,” he says. “We have to try.”

Joker takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders. “You’d better find a seat belt.”

The Normandy shudders and groans while scraping past the wreckage. Kaidan grips the back of Joker’s chair tightly while Joker pushes the ship through any opening he can find that a frigate can squeeze through. EDI updates them on the shields and the small Collector vessels still following them. The debris stymied all but the most stubborn and even they are having trouble keeping up with the Normandy.

 _“What was that?”_ Shepard demands when the ship forces itself through a fast-shrinking opening between three broken ships.

“Going through the debris field to shake the Collectors off,” Kaidan replies. “What happened to the one in the cargo hold?”

_“It’s gone. Left through the breach when - it’s back. Grunt, take it out-”_

Kaidan flinches from the loud gunfire blasting into his earpiece. It goes on for several agonizing minutes and then stops. When he hears only Grunt preening, Massani swearing, and Jack muttering darkly about “fucking eyeballs”, he calls out to Shepard.

 _“Shit, sorry, didn’t duck in time when it blew up some crates,”_ Shepard replies breathlessly. _“That thing was a pain in the ass. What’s the status? Are we clear?”_

Kaidan repeats the question to Joker, who says, “Besides squeezing her past all these ships? Yeah. Come on, baby, we’re almost free.”

The barrier holds as the Normandy bursts free of the debris field. The Collector vessels reappear in fewer numbers, many damaged by the wreckage, and EDI picks them off one by one.

Kaidan glances at Shepard when he returns to the cockpit, dinged and bruised but no worse for wear. Still, Kaidan says, “You look like hell.”

“You have no idea,” Shepard says flatly. Then, “Here we go.”

The Collectors’ base looms into view, a massive construct floating precariously at the edge of the black hole’s accretion disk. Something launches from the base and Kaidan’s heart leaps up his throat at the sight of the massive Collector cruiser - the one that killed Shepard and nearly stole him away from Horizon - turning to intercept their path.

But they’re ready this time. The Normandy skirts around the ship’s powerful weapons and, at Shepard’s command, fires two volleys from the upgraded main guns. The ship explodes in a cascade and overwhelms the Normandy’s systems before Joker can move out of range.

“Oh, shit-” Joker scrambles with the controls while the ship hurtles towards the base. “Hang on!”

Kaidan comes to on his back, shoved against the side of the cockpit. Joker is groaning about either his ribs or the state of the Normandy. Shepard leans over and pulls Kaidan to his feet.

“You okay?” he asks, eyes sweeping over Kaidan.

“I’ll live. For now, anyway. What about the ship?”

“Normandy’s intact but it’s going to take a while to get the systems back online,” Joker says. “So we’ll just, you know, hang out on the Collector base and hope nobody looks out the window.”

“Windows are a structural weakness,” Kaidan says, echoing a geth sniper’s remark about the lack of windows on a repurposed quarian station weeks ago. “I’ll check in with the others.”

“EDI, any movements? Have the Collectors detected us?” Shepard asks while Kaidan turns away.

“I detect no internal security grid or movement near the exterior. It is likely the Collectors did not expect anyone to get this far.”

Kaidan taps on his omni-tool while keeping an ear on EDI’s assessments. “Is everyone okay?”

Everyone but Solus answers immediately and in the affirmative; the professor strolls out of his lab, holding what looks like a heavy cryo-weapon. “Am well. Survived worse landings than this, though never at the galactic core. Should make a fascinating case study if we survive. WIll be in briefing room if anybody asks.”

Kaidan nods and turns back to Shepard. “They’re fine. What’s next?”

“EDI, scan the base. I need to know what we’re going into and where they’re holding the crew.” He pulls Kaidan’s omni-tool up to his face. “Need everyone in the briefing room in two minutes. We need a strategy if we’re rescuing our crew and blowing this base to hell and gone.”

* * *

“You ever think about becoming a speechwriter?” Garrus asks while they advance through a twisting corridor. “I could use one.”

“I just make it up,” Shepard says. “Important thing is to mean every word of it. If you don’t, no one will believe anything you say-”

_“Shepard-Commander, we recommend lowering your voice by several decibels to avoid detection.”_

Kaidan raises an eyebrow while Goto stifles her laughter.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Shepard says with a huff. “What’s your status?”

_“The path is clear. However, we detect movement in the area ahead.”_

“Showtime,” Goto says and activates her tactical cloak.

The corridor opens up to a cavernous room composed of platforms and consoles piling on each other. The Collectors within immediately open fire; Kaidan throws up a barrier until the others find cover and then pushes the field at the nearest drones, crushing them against the walls. On the other side of the room, Goto emerges from hiding to stab a Collector with her omni-blades and vanishes before others can retaliate.

_“Shepard-Commander, there is an obstruction in the vent. We cannot proceed until you release the valve.”_

“I’ll handle it,” Kaidan says. 

He throws a field at the Collectors near the vent to clear the way and sprints to the valve, trusting his armor to deflect gunfire. He opens the valve and turns around to seize and toss a Collector away from him. Shepard shoots it out of the sky and it lands on another drone, killing it.

They follow the thermal vent and EDI’s map to the heart of the base, hitting the valves blocking Legion’s way and attacking the Collectors sent to stop them. They move quickly and seamlessly, Garrus sniping from the back and Goto ambushing the Collectors to create chaos while Kaidan and Shepard tag-team with biotics and firearms, trapping the drones in a lethal crossfire.

_“Miranda here. We’re almost at the rendezvous point. What’s your status?”_

“Only thing slowing us down are the valves in the vent,” Shepard replies while they hurry through a massive chamber. “Legion?”

_“We have reached an obstruction. You must release the valve for us to proceed.”_

Goto vaults over to the controls to release it. Collectors descend almost immediately after, firearms trained on her. She throws something and yells, “Cover your eyes!”

Kaidan ducks behind a ledge and waits until the flashbang grenades go off, blinding the Collectors for a few precious seconds. Everyone fires at the drones and a few fall, but the others recover and launch a counterattack.

“Assuming control,” a synthetic voice utters and a Collector burns bright with overloading cybernetics.

“What the hell,” Garrus says, swinging his sniper rifle over. His headshot would’ve killed most Collectors but the towering drone shrugs off the dent in its head and throws a heavy field at him, forcing him to abandon his rifle for cover.

 _“Shepard-Commander,”_ Legion calls out, _“there is one more obstruction before we reach the central chamber. You must release the valve.”_

Kaidan peers over the ledge and spots the valve across the chamber behind a group of Collectors. “That’s not good-”

“Watch my six,” Shepard says grimly, glowing biotic blue.

He launches forward before Kaidan can protest; the commander plows through the Collectors and lands with a shockwave, throwing them off the platform by detonating his barrier. Shepard hits the switch to free Legion and blasts a Collector’s head off with his shotgun before the others swarm him.

Kaidan gauges the distance between him and Shepard, and tells Garrus, “Cover me.”

“What? Are you serious-”

He vaults over the ledge and runs across the platforms, tossing Collectors aside and firing at their exposed backs while running past. A Collector suddenly seizes up, burning brightly while the synthetic voice declares itself. Kaidan takes an involuntary step back and flinches when another Collector hits his shields.

Ahead, Shepard manages to shake off a Collector and crush part of its head with the heel of his boot before the other knocks him to the floor.

“You prolong the inevitable,” the synthetic voice says as the fiery Collector advances. “I am the harbinger of your perfection. I will show you true power.”

“Not today,” Kaidan says and overloads the Collector’s cybernetics, weakening and slowing it down. He fires at its chest, punching holes in the carapace, and then detonates his armor’s shields. He raises a biotic barrier and runs past the crumbling body to help Shepard with the last Collector.

“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Shepard says while slamming the butt of his shotgun into the Collector’s head and forcing it back.

“You’re the idiot who charged at them without warning,” Kaidan replies and throws the Collector across the chamber. It crashes into the Collector attacking Goto and both topple off the platform. Kaidan pushes Shepard towards the door at the end of the chamber. “Garrus!”

Garrus covers their escape with a barrage of bullets, dropping several Collectors and slowing the other drones. Goto reaches the door first but it doesn’t open. She slams her fist against it, yelling, “Hey! Anybody there?”

A muffled voice yells for Legion to open the door. As soon as it cracks open, Lawson, Krios, and Massani open fire on the advancing Collectors. Grunt and Garrus force the door open for Kaidan, Shepard, and Goto to slip through.

“Shut the door,” Lawson tells Legion. “Now!”

Tali dispatches her combat drone to distract the closest Collectors while Legion hacks the door. It slides shut and Legion breaks the controls for good measure, locking the Collectors out.

“Everyone good?” Shepard asks once they catch their breaths.

“I’m hungry,” Grunt offers.

“You ate everything on the ship, how are you still hungry?” Jack says while counting thermal clips in her pistols.

“How do you even have an appetite?” Goto wonders.

Massani nods to the wide corridor leading to the center of the Collector base while planting mines around the door. “Where do you think that leads?”

“To the crew, hopefully. If we’re really lucky, Horizon survivors, too,” Shepard says. “Let’s go.”

* * *

“Mordin, get the crew back to the Normandy,” Shepard says, turning away from the broken pods lying around the chamber. He looks up at the narrow pipes connecting the other pods on the walls and ceilings to the massive ducts carrying human genetic material to another part of the base. “Miranda, keep the Collectors busy. Samara?”

She nods. “I am ready.”

“I’ll come with,” Kaidan says. “Just in case.”

Shepard nods and turns to Krios. “Thane?”

“Very well,” he says, taking out his sniper rifle. Garrus hands him extra clips before joining Lawson and the others.

“See you on the other side,” she says and Taylor salutes them while the fire team heads down the alternate route.

The strategy is to divide and conquer, Lawson’s fire team drawing most of the Collectors’ attention while Shepard’s sneaks in through a back passage. The goal is wherever the giant pipes lead; EDI detected an energy signature at the other end but could not tell what the Collectors are using the genetic material for. That’s more than enough for everyone to agree that the Collectors’ operation ends today, no matter how it’s done.

“We must move quickly,” Samara says at the door. “I will maintain the barrier for as long as I am able but even I have my limits.”

With a graceful gesture, she encases them in a biotic barrier. At a nod, Kaidan hits the switch and opens the door to the waiting seeker swarms. They swirl around the barrier, obscuring the walkway with their ever-shifting forms.

“This will be difficult,” Samara says. “If you can, scatter them so that I can see the way.”

Kaidan sweeps the swarms away with a throw field, revealing an unpleasant surprise - Collectors landing on the walkway ahead of them. One abruptly topples back and Kaidan looks over his shoulder to see Krios popping a clip from his rifle.

“I will remain here until the path is clear,” Samara says. “Do not cross the barrier.”

That proves difficult. The Collectors are well entrenched at a distance and the swarms obscure Kaidan’s line of sight. He wastes more clips than he’d like keeping the Collectors away from Samara and still they come. He glances at Shepard to see the commander fidgeting while throwing shockwaves from cover and knows just how badly Shepard wants to bring the fight to them.

A disjointed voice seizes control of a Collector and tries to flank them, throwing powerful biotic fields at Samara’s barrier. The justicar clenches her jaw and holds firm as the drone advances. It shrugs off Krios’s throw fields and Shepard’s shotgun and attacks the barrier again. Kaidan feels the violent collision this time and knows that not even a powerful asari like Samara can hold on under that kind of assault.

“Weaken it,” Samara says through clenched teeth. “Use warp fields.”

Kaidan does just that, trapping the fiery Collector in a heavy field before emptying a clip into it. It staggers back, goes down to one knee from Krios’s well-placed shot, and finally falls from Shepard’s biotic volley. 

“Samara?” Shepard asks. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m all right. When you’re ready, Shepard.”

They push through the seeker swarms, following the pipes carrying liquefied human genetic material to another part of the base. Kaidan shudders, wishing he can forget Lilith screaming while being dissolved into gray matter. Or the millions of pods lining the walls of the Collector ship and the thought that they’d eventually set their sights on Earth to get what they need, whatever it is.

At Samara’s request, Krios throws a field to clear out the swarms, exposing a horde of charging husks. The others immediately open fire, mowing them down before they get too close. Then a grotesque fused husk lumbers into view and fires a heavy biotic shockwave at Samara before the others could act. The impact slams into her and the barrier flickers, weakening. A seeker slips past and Shepard crushes it but more press against the barrier, trying to force their way in.

“Samara!” he shouts when her knees buckle. “Kaidan, the barrier!”

Kaidan forces the swarms back with his own barrier. Husks crawl out from the crevices and charge; with Shepard helping Samara to her feet, Krios takes it upon himself to dispatch them with careful yet rapid headshots. Samara kills the last with her pistol and presses her hand to her forehead.

“That was… not what I anticipated,” she says. “Whatever that creature did… I will need time for my abilities to return to full strength.”

“We don’t have time,” Krios replies.

“I can walk us for a bit,” Kaidan says.

“You sure?” Shepard asks. He pulls up his omni-tool to examine their route. “We’re halfway there. You think you can handle it?”

“I’m the only other person who can,” Kaidan says. His voice trembles ever so slightly and he hopes nobody else notices. “We don’t have a choice.”

“All right,” Shepard says reluctantly. “Stay back and don’t strain yourself. If you go down, too….”

“I won’t.”

They move on. Husks keep crawling out of the dark to charge them but now Kaidan can’t defend himself. He has to stay behind the others to maintain the barrier and the effort throbs dully at the back of his head. He wonders how Samara could hold the field for as long as she did. 

Shepard turn to Kaidan after the last husk in the second wave crumples. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m fine.” Sweat beads on his forehead, threatening to drip into his eye, and Shepard wipes it away. “Just tell me when.”

“Let’s go.”

Lawson checks in while they move forward, informing Shepard over the muffled gunfire on her end that they’re on schedule for the rendezvous. Samara falls back to Kaidan’s side while Krios takes point a few feet ahead and quietly says, “You’re using your abilities for something you weren’t trained to do. You must tell me if the effort becomes too much to bear.”

“I’ll manage,” he says. “What about you?”

She holds her hand up and it glows faintly. “A few more minutes and then I can take over.”

“All right.” Kaidan tries to wet his lip but his mouth is dry. “Wish we were already there.”

“We’re not far,” she replies. “Just hold on a little longer.”

A little longer turns out to be a lot longer when a group of Collectors land between them and a long ramp connecting the walkway with the rendezvous point and the location of the energy signature. Two drones go down quickly and then another burns up while the synthetic voice booms, “Assuming control.”

“Shepard!” Kaidan warns and Shepard immediately throws a shockwave at it. The biotic impacts plow through the other Collectors and barely stagger the enhanced drone.

“I will show you true power,” the Collector says. “My attacks will tear you apart.”

Kaidan’s barrier withstands the first assault. It shudders and shrinks when the second field hits. He grits his teeth and pushes back but the Collector’s powerful biotics hit too hard for him to recover from.

“It’s just down the ramp, right?” he asks while watching Krios distract the Collector. “I can’t hold it for much longer. You need to run for it.”

“What about you?” Samara asks.

“Someone needs to hold the swarms back-”

“What? No,” Shepard snaps. “I’m not leaving you behind.”

“It’s either that or someone stop that Collector,” Kaidan retorts. His grasp on the barrier field is weakening despite his best efforts. “It’s too powerful.”

Shepard stares at the fiery Collector shrugging off Krios’s attacks. “Samara?”

She frowns. “I can try.”

“Don’t see another option.” A biotic field wraps around Shepard and he storms forward before Kaidan realizes what he’s doing.

Samara reaches out with her biotics to seize and lift the Collector off the ground. Shepard crashes into it, blowing it apart; seeker swarms immediately descend but can’t penetrate the residual barrier left behind by the biotic charge. Shepard shoots another Collector at point-blank range with his shotgun before sprinting back to safety.

“We’re having words after this,” Kaidan promises because he’s too tired to be angry and now isn’t the time.

An unearthly wail rises all around them and husks crawl out from under the platform. Shepard and Krios hold them off while they run to the ramp and the locked door. As soon as Kaidan’s barrier reaches the door, Krios breaks away to bypass its locking mechanism.

“Commander,” Krios calls out when the door slides open.

“Go, Shepard,” Kaidan says. “I got this.”

The commander moves slowly, set on taking out every Collector he sees. Samara provides cover fire but Lawson’s voice then crackles on the comm, asking someone to open the door on their side.

“Don’t have time for this,” Kaidan mutters. He takes a deep breath and throws his barrier out, slamming it into Collectors and swarms and clearing the area of their presence. Spent, he staggers and nearly falls; Shepard and Samara catch him and haul him through the door before his knees buckle.

“I’m fine,” he says, waving them off. “Help the others.”

Shepard reluctantly follows Samara to the other door while Krios closes off their exit. Lawson’s fire team tumbles in, pursued by Collectors. Samara helps Lawson push them back with a sweeping throw field and Jack joins them in hurling the drones into walls and off the ledge. 

A new wave of Collectors land and start firing on them and Lawson, forcing a retreat behind the door. Lawson is the last one in and stumbles from the bullets chasing her through the door. 

“Miranda!” Shepard calls out.

“I’m all right!” she says. The wound is shallow, the bullet only grazing her side, but red blooms brightly on her white suit. “It’s nothing. Someone shut that door!”

Tali runs to the console to seal it and Massani blasts out its locking mechanism, preventing attempts to bypass it. “That’ll keep those bastards busy.”

Garrus crouches next to Kaidan, armor scorched but otherwise looking none the worse for wear. “That bad, huh?”

Kaidan laughs shakily. He’s utterly drained and his hands won’t stop shaking. He can’t even curl his fingers. “Normally you try to leave something in reserve but I didn’t have a choice.”

“I know. Suicide mission, remember?”

“Yeah. Just need a minute… and a snack.” He has a few stashed in his belt but can’t trust his hands to work properly. “Biotic metabolism can be a pain in the ass.”

He ducks away from the broken energy bar Shepard tosses at his head and huffs a laugh at Garrus’s exasperation while clumsily tearing off the foil wrapper.

“What the hell is this place?” Jack mutters, squinting into the distance. “All this space and for what, those giant fucking tubes?”

“Nah, they’re going somewhere,” Massani replies, eyeing them critically. “What do you reckon’s on the other side?”

“No idea but whatever they’re doing, we’re putting an end to it,” Shepard says. “Joker, what’s your status? Did Mordin and the crew make it back?”

_“... they’re all here and the Normandy’s systems are almost back online. But sensors are showing a lot of movement at your location.”_

_“Shepard,”_ EDI adds, _“those tubes lead directly to the energy signature in the chamber ahead of you. I suggest you set the explosives there for maximum impact.”_

“Thanks, EDI.” 

“So what’s the plan?” Lawson asks. “How are we doing this?”

Shepard looks up at the sealed doors and the distant sounds of Collectors gathering on the other side. His eyes then sweep over the team, counting heads and strategizing. His gaze lingers on Kaidan for a second longer and then he says, “Here’s what we’ll do….”

* * *

Kaidan modifies his omni-tool’s settings while watching Garrus and Massani set small mines around the door. Others are grimly checking their gear and counting clips and, in Goto’s case, flashbang grenades. They glance at the doors every time the Collectors slam against them, reminding them that time is running out.

“Hey,” Shepard says, tapping his shoulder. “Can you fight?”

“Are you really asking me this?” he asks while minimizing the omni-tool display. He flexes his hands, hoping they’ll hold his firearms steady until his biotics are no longer out of commission. “So, this is it. This is the end.”

“Could be.” Shepard watches Tali programming Chatika and Garrus arguing with Massani over the proximity mines. “But not if I can help it.”

“You know, sometimes I wonder how you pull it off. But if you don’t - don’t worry. We’ll all go down fighting.” He looks at Shepard, at the stubborn gray-blue eyes and the glow of cybernetics healing cuts and bruises on his golden skin. Others are here, possibly watching, but he still pulls Shepard in for a kiss. “Good luck.”

Shepard’s eyes are bright as he climbs onto a platform with Lawson and Taylor, calling everyone in for one last talk.

“Where does he find the time to memorize this shit?” Massani mutters and Garrus coughs into his arm.

Shepard looks at everyone one more time and then calls up EDI while turning away. “Take us in, EDI….”

They position themselves for the inevitable. Garrus, Massani, Samara, and Grunt form the front line while the others find cover and Tali releases her drone. They watch and wait for the doors to finally give way, for the walls to cave and the Collectors to burst onto the landing.

The mines trigger, blowing apart the first Collectors through the doors, and then they open fire. Tali’s drone darts in and out to shock Collectors and distract them from Goto’s shadowed strikes. One almost catches her vanishing under her tactical cloak but falls from Legion’s headshot.

“I hate these assholes,” Jake growls. She’s in cover next to Kaidan and her biotics shimmer all over her skin. “Cover me, pretty boy.”

Sighing internally, Kaidan turns his rifle on the Collectors to keep them busy while Jack throws herself at them like a biotic missile. She thrashes them around, crushing drones against the walls and knocking them off the landing. Her explosive destructive biotics are poetry in motion but they doesn’t kill every Collector. One suddenly burns bright with overpowered cybernetics and her fields bounce harmlessly off it.

“Take it out!” Kaidan shouts.

It shrugs off his bullets and Jack’s biotics and throws powerful unstable fields at her until they knock her off her feet. Samara drags her to safety while the others rain bullets and dark energy on the controlled drone.

“I am the harbinger of your perfection,” it utters while throwing a field at Krios and Legion. “You only damage the vessel. You cannot hurt me.”

“What the hell _is_ that thing?” Garrus demands while trying to overload its cybernetics. 

“It is one of the Old Machines,” Legion says. “This Collector is an extension of it.”

“Like with Saren,” Tali says, echoing Kaidan’s thoughts from months ago. 

“Yes.” Legion then kills the Collector with a headshot. The body collapses and crumbles to dust. “This base must be eliminated.”

The base suddenly shudders and groans all around them, raining debris on their heads. An explosion echoes through the chamber and the Collectors turn as one to the source with several taking flight to investigate. Others retreat back through the open doors, leaving a few to maintain pressure on the team.

“Something spooked them,” Goto remarks. “Must be Shepard.”

As if on cue, Shepard’s voice crackles in Kaidan’s ear. _“Kaidan? You there?”_

“Still here.” He peers out of cover to see Chatika lure a Collector into the path of a charging krogan. “So’s everybody else. What happened?”

_“I’ll explain later but I’m about to rig the core. Already contacted Joker; he’s bringing the Normandy to your location. Get off this base as soon as he’s there.”_

“And you?” He ducks a bullet and then leans over to shoot the offending Collector’s hand, forcing it to drop its rifle. Garrus then blasts it off its feet with a concussive shot, leaving a smoking hole in its carapace. “Shepard, what about you?”

 _“Get everyone out of here. I need you alive.”_ Shepard cuts the link before Kaidan can reply.

Garrus slides into cover next to him, splattered in gunk and breathing hard. He pops the spent clip in his assault rifle and searches for more. “Well?”

“Soon as Joker radios in, we run for it,” Kaidan says. Biotics lick along his tech armor as he fires at another Collector. Tali’s drone shocks it and Goto decloaks to stab it in the back. “All of us. No one gets left behind.”

“Shepard’s orders?” Garrus doesn’t ask how Shepard, Lawson, and Taylor plan to outrun the inevitable.

“Yeah. Get ready.”

The Collector base shakes again and the drones become agitated, attacking bodily as well as with their weapons and with no sense of order. With his biotics back to full strength, Kaidan joins Garrus out in front, shielding himself with a barrier and his tech armor while mowing down the Collectors right and left.

Joker contacts him minutes later and EDI forwards the Normandy’s location. Kaidan looks around the carnage on the landing, at the Collectors either piling in or flying off for wherever in the massive chamber Shepard, Lawson, and Taylor are, and relays Shepard’s command to the others.

“Get back to the ship,” he orders. “Everyone, move!”

They fall back through a small passageway hugging the cavernous wall. Kaidan and Garrus bring up the rear, keeping the Collectors back with throw fields and gunfire. Massani joins them to toss the last of his grenades at the drones and they beat a hasty retreat before the explosives detonate and the passageway caves in.

The Normandy hovers next to a landing pad. Joker waits at the airlock, nervously gripping an assault rifle. Mordin and Chambers help them back onto the ship; Chakwas waits by the armory with a medical kit, determined to check everyone over for injuries despite her ordeal.

“Did you hear from him?” Kaidan asks Joker while following him to the cockpit.

“Not yet,” Joker says. “But he said - hang on - Commander, everyone’s here. Just say the word and I’ll come get you.”

_“Sending you my location now.”_

The Normandy swings around the base, chasing Shepard’s signal until they find the commander and the two Cerberus officers climbing out of a massive hole in the side of the base. EDI reports a growing number of Collectors pursuing them but won’t turn the GARDIAN lasers around, fearing they’ll cause a catastrophic collapse of that part of the construct.

 _“Open the airlock!”_ Lawson yells.

Kaidan runs to the airlock and pulls out his pistol. He steps out just in time to see Taylor jumping across the short distance between the landing and the ship. Kaidan hauls him to safety and Lawson follows soon after while throwing fields at the pursuing Collectors.

“Shepard!” Kaidan traps a Collector in a heavy warp field and shoots another in the head, giving Shepard the chance to run for the ship.

The base’s exterior had been destabilized by whatever punched a hole in it, however, and pieces of the landing break away, widening the distance between Shepard and the Normandy. Shepard doesn’t hesitate, sprinting to the edge and leaping for the airlock. Lawson keeps the Collectors at bay while Kaidan pulls him onto the Normandy. They stumble inside and Taylor yells for Joker to leave.

“Made it,” Shepard says with a tired laugh while limping through the second airlock onto the deck. Kaidan follows him to the helm with a steadying hand on his upper arm while Lawson and Taylor meet with Chakwas and the others. “Get us out of here, Joker.”

“Way ahead of you, Commander,” Joker says and the Normandy rockets away to the relay at the edge of the debris field.

“So what happened?” Kaidan asks. “What were the Collectors doing with all those people?”

“Building a Reaper with our genetic material,” Shepard says. “If we didn’t stop them, the Collectors would’ve harvested every human in the galaxy and added a new Reaper to the ranks. Makes you wonder how Sovereign was made.” He bows his head. “Illusive Man contacted me at the last second. He wanted me to preserve the base.”

“Seriously? What does he want with that place?”

“Research. Claimed it was in humanity’s best interest but… well, you know Cerberus. Told him I couldn’t risk anyone getting their hands on that place and its Reaper tech. So I blew it up.”

“Good,” Kaidan says. “Only thing Cerberus ever did right was bringing you back.”

Shepard smiles.

“Don’t forget the Normandy,” Joker adds. “Can’t have one without the other.”

“So what now?” Lawson says behind them. Kaidan and Shepard turn to her and the others, who are all still on the CIC with Chakwas and the rescued crew.

“Now?” Shepard says. “We just bought the galaxy some time to-”

“Commander,” Chambers calls out from the far end of the deck. “The Illusive Man wishes to speak with you.”

Shepard clasps a hand on Kaidan’s shoulder and says, “Time to turn in my resignation letter. Wish me luck.”


	17. Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Really rated M. For Reasons.

What do you do when you survive a suicide mission? Repair the ship and reevaluate your future, apparently.

Everyone pitches in to get the Normandy back into shape. Even Liara helps, sending a team of engineers to meet them at a dry dock on Illium. While Joker hangs back to keep an eye on the engineers and the AI core room, the others wander around Nos Astra, shaking off the ordeal and coming down from the euphoria of being _alive_.

 _“Feel free to use my apartment while you’re there,”_ LIara says by vid comm in her former office above the trading floor. _“After everything you went through, you deserve something nice.”_

The team gathers at her apartment but not to relax. Tali and Goto pick apart the building for bugs and Shepard has to tell off Garrus and Massani for trying to boobytrap the doors and windows. Grumbling, they settle for watching the perimeter while tuning into the discussion in the living room.

“Now that the Collectors have been dealt with, what do you plan to do now?” Samara finally asks. “What do we all plan to do?”

“I told you, be a space pirate,” Jack says while wandering around the apartment, peering at the display cases. “You’ve got the ship and crew, which you stole from Cerberus so you’re already halfway there.”

“Count me in for space piracy,” Goto calls out from Liara’s kitchen. “Should’ve ordered some food….”

“I’d like to return to the Citadel,” Krios says. “Kolyat is there and I… still have much to do.”

“Tuchanka here,” Grunt says. “But only if there aren’t any more Collector heads to crush.”

“Perhaps I can some with, see what other work Maelon did with Clan Weyrloc,” Mordin suggests. Grunt stares at him. “Or maybe go back to Omega. See how David is doing with the clinic. Look for Maelon there if he took my advice. Then perhaps return to Sur’Kesh. Much to do and little time to do it.”

Massani shrugs and grumbles, “Bet I can find some work around here. People always need something done that they won’t do themselves.”

“And the Reapers?” Lawson says. “Destroying the Collector base doesn’t change the fact that they’re coming back.”

Legion nods, its head flaps shifting anxiously. “We must return to the geth consensus.”

“And I have to go back to the Fleet,” Tali says. “Without my father… I know the other admirals are talking about retaking Rannoch but there’s no way we can start a war with the Reapers coming.”

Kaidan nudges Shepard’s knee with his. “We need to go back to the Alliance. Tell them everything.”

“Yeah,” Shepard says, shoulders slumping forward.

“They have to listen to you this time,” Taylor says. “Alliance knows who was kidnapping the colonists and you stopped them.”

“While the Alliance did nothing,” Kaidan reminds him. “They weren’t risking a war with the Terminus. But Anderson believes you. That’s a start.”

“Or do what I do,” Garrus says. “Keep kicking and screaming until they finally notice.”

Shepard laughs. “That’s your plan?”

“Maybe.” Garrus looks at the impressive view of Nos Astra’s graceful skyline. “Don’t forget to tell them about Cerberus. They may have helped you stop the Collectors but I don’t like what you said about your conversation with the Illusive Man.”

“If he saw what we saw at that shithole,” Massani says, “he’d have a different opinion of it. Even I have limits.”

“He’ll just find another way,” Lawson says. “Garrus is right. If the Alliance won’t listen to you about the Reapers, at least warn them about Cerberus.”

“Is the cheerleader actually turning on them?” Jack says with mock wonder. “Aren’t you a bit late for that?”

“Better late than never,” Lawson replies tactfully. 

“She’s right,” Shepard says. “Once the repairs are finished, I can take each of you wherever you want to go. It’s the least I can do after what we went through. Just know that we only slowed the Reapers down. They’re coming and everyone needs to be ready when they arrive.”

* * *

“... I’ll see what I can do.”

Kaidan blinks awake to the sound of two familiar voices talking in the dimmed cabin and sits up. Shepard is nowhere to be seen but light shines from the office and around whatever’s covering the display case.

_“I expect nothing less. Good luck, Commander. Hackett out.”_

The screen disappears, revealing the model ships and a grim Shepard staring at a miniature Alliance cruiser. When he doesn’t come back, Kaidan gets out of bed and goes up the steps to his desk. “Was that Admiral Hackett?”

Shepard starts and quickly turns around. “Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t know you were awake.”

Kaidan looks at him from head to toe. “Did you take a call with _Admiral Hackett_ without pants? Also, that’s my shirt.”

“Is it?” Shepard plucks at the ends of the black shirt. “Thought the shoulders were a bit loose. And I _am_ wearing something. Also, he didn’t know. At least I hope not.”

“Right.” Kaidan leans against the support wall, watching Shepard. “So what was that all about? What did he want?”

Shepard doesn’t meet his eyes. Instead, he stares at the fish tank behind Kaidan while saying, “Told him about the Collectors and Cerberus. He asked when I plan to return to the Alliance and if I’m ready for the inquiries about my work with them. Same goes for you.”

“No surprises there.”

Shepard sits on the edge of his desk and turns his attention to a stack of datapads. The top one displays some of the data EDI pulled from the Collectors’ base, including specs on an old Reaper called Harbinger. “Told him about that… human-Reaper the Collectors were building and warned that Cerberus is up to something. But since I quit, I don’t know what they’re doing. Hackett said he and Anderson are forwarding everything to the parliament. Let’s hope they listen.”

“And that’s it?” Kaidan asks. 

Everyone knows Admiral Hackett has a soft spot for Shepard but that doesn’t explain him talking to the commander by vid comm about matters that could be discussed later in person. No, the admiral needed to discuss something with Shepard that he couldn’t risk sending through the extranet.

Shepard sighs. “That’s all I can say.”

If the admiral wills it, Kaidan won’t protest. “Okay. So, what’s the ETA?”

“At the pace we’re going? About seven hours and forty-six minutes to the Citadel. I think Joker’s going slow on purpose,” Shepard says. “Why?”

“You’re not in bed,” Kaidan says casually. “Maybe get your ass back in it?”

They don’t make it back to bed.

Kaidan pins him against the fish tank, licking into his mouth and pressing a thigh between his. Shepard moans, low and needy, and rocks against him while flickering blue with biotics. Kaidan buries his face in the crook of Shepard’s neck, breathing in the earthy scent of sex mingling with Shepard’s and his; it’s heady and arousing and he wants more.

“Right here?” Shepard asks breathlessly when Kaidan turns him around and pushes him up against the thick glass.

“Yeah,” Kaidan says, “unless you have a problem with that.” He mouths at the tense line of Shepard’s neck while pulling his briefs down. “Do you?”

“No.” Shepard shudders when he presses a finger in and pushes against it. “Come on. What are you waiting for?”

Kaidan fucks him right there, teeth digging into his shoulder and hands teasing and stroking him to frustration. Stasis fields pin Shepard’s hands to the thick glass and they clench tightly whenever Kaidan drags him close to release only to back off at the last second. Biotics flicker and flare, scaring off the tank’s occupants, and Kaidan would laugh if he wasn’t so preoccupied with Shepard. He presses kisses to Shepard’s damp staticky skin, peppers his neck with bites, and everything tastes like eezo and salt.

“Fuck, Kaidan,” Shepard gasps, body taut and trembling with tension. “Come on. Please. Please, just-” He chokes on his words when Kaidan sinks back into him, moaning loudly instead and pushing back.

“Just what? What do you want?” Kaidan asks. He drags his fingernails lightly up and down Shepard’s chest, drawing out a low desperate sound. It hits him hard, a shiver up his spine and heat pooling low in his groin, and he can barely speak, let alone think. “Shepard. What do you want?”

Shepard looks over his shoulder at Kaidan, eyes glowing blue. “Just… just you.”

Kaidan kisses him, clumsy and open-mouthed, and relaxes his hold on his biotics. Something rattles loose in the cabin but they don’t care, not when Kaidan finally pushes him over the edge and follows soon after with a muffled groan against his shoulder.

Later, he looks up at the window on the ceiling, staring at the Normandy’s swirling barrier and the distant stars while Shepard sleeps in his arms, and wonders why the admiral came calling.

* * *

He should’ve known. He should’ve asked how Anderson convinced the Alliance to back off. In his defense, he assumed Anderson arranged the meeting discretely to ask what he learned from the Collector base and Cerberus.

“Cerberus only interfered when the Collectors were directly involved. He told Shepard about the Collector cruiser. It’s how we learned about the IFF but he definitely wanted whatever data the VI pulled from the databases,” he says while staring out the balcony at the Presidium. “He also wanted Shepard to preserve the base.”

“Did he?”

“Shepard blew it up. Whatever advantages Cerberus thinks it could find in there isn’t worth the cost. I saw her. One of Horizon’s colonists, Lilith. I watched them liquefy her to use her genetic material. That’s what they were doing to the colonists.”

“Shepard said they were building a human Reaper.” Anderson shakes his head. “What a nightmare. Glad you and Shepard stopped it.”

“Yeah.” Sensing a lull in the conversation, Kaidan asks, “What will the Alliance do now?”

“Since you saved the other colonies from these Reaper agents, they’ll probably reinstate you - as long as you undergo evaluations and an official inquiry. In fact, they might promote you. Talks about nominating you for Spectre training’s on hold, though.”

Kaidan stares. “A promotion? Really?”

“It’s their way of thanking you for doing what they couldn’t.”

“Yeah, okay, fine.” Kaidan digs fingertips into his temple. He’d forgotten how frustratingly illogical politics can be. “What about Shepard?”

“If all goes well, he turns himself in for questioning and nothing comes of it. I won’t lie, there’ll be a lot of questions about his work with Cerberus and where he was for two years after losing the Normandy. Their words, not mine.”

“I’m guessing we can’t just say he was dead.”

“No, that’ll bring up even more questions. Like what you told me about this Miranda Lawson. She wanted to implant a control chip?”

Kaidan nods. “The Illusive Man wouldn’t let her. Said he wanted Shepard back _as himself_.”

“I still have a hard time believing that. Imagine how the others would react.”

“Okay.” He straightens his back, ready for the meeting to end so that he can return to the Normandy. “Anything else, Councilor?”

“There is, actually.” Anderson glances at one of his terminals and then leans against his desk with an air of resignation. “You won’t be returning to the Normandy.”

“Why? Is that one of their conditions? Promote me and-”

“No, I mean the Normandy isn’t here. It left the Citadel seven minutes ago.”

He goes cold, heart thumping nervously in his chest. “You’re kidding. Shepard would’ve-” He suddenly remembers Admiral Hackett’s call and Shepard’s evasiveness. “Hackett sent him on assignment. Without me.”

Where did Hackett send Shepard and what about it made Shepard decide to leave him behind? 

“I don’t know the details myself,” Anderson says. “Need-to-know and all that. But Shepard thought it best to keep you out of it in case things go south.”

Kaidan is Alliance. Military. He understands. And yet. “Unbelievable. He can’t - he should’ve-”

“He couldn’t, Alenko,” Anderson says. “You know that.”

“I know, but-” His heart keeps pounding. That could only mean Hackett needed something done that couldn’t be traced back to the Alliance. To the admiral. To Kaidan. “He didn’t even say goodbye.”

Anderson watches him pensively. “I take it a lot happened during the mission.”

He wants to laugh or go back to Dark Star Lounge for too many drinks and another drunken message over the old frequency. No one will hear it this time but it’s worth a shot, isn’t it? “You could say that.” 

Anderson nods sympathetically. “I’m sorry.”

Kaidan gives Anderson a salute and turns away. “I’ll be in the lounge down in Zakera if the brass comes looking for me.”

He doesn’t see Shepard again for six months.

* * *

Six months is time enough to break in his new rank, regain the trust and respect of his fellow marines and superiors, become a commander with the Special Operations Biotics Division, and rebuild his reputation as one of the Alliance’s best and most reliable officers.

Six months isn’t enough.

“Dismissed, Major,” an admiral says before turning to the others with a dissatisfied frown.

He leaves the room and spots Admiral Anderson waiting to be called in by the tribunal. “Admiral.”

“Major,” Anderson says, exchanging salutes. “How did it go in there?”

“As well as you can imagine,” he says. “I don’t like this.”

“Nobody does.”

An achingly familiar voice catches his attention. Anderson knowingly steps aside and strikes up a conversation with another officer while he approaches Shepard and Lieutenant James Vega.

“Shepard,” he says.

The commander turns around while Vega salutes and says, “Major.”

Shepard raises an eyebrow. He looks almost the same as the last time Kaidan saw him, only he’s now wearing Alliance fatigues and looking a little soft around the edges. “Major, huh? Why wasn’t I told this?”

Kaidan wants to laugh, embrace Shepard, kiss him, or tell him off for what he did six months ago, but this isn’t the time and others are watching. He settles for a shrug. “Sorry. I got too busy.”

“Suppose that comes with the rank,” Shepard says, grinning, and holds out his hand. “Congratulations, Major Alenko. You’ve earned it.”

“Thank you, Commander.” He feels Vega’s eyes on him, on the handshake that goes on for too long to be proper. “You should go in. They’re pretty worried.”

“Yeah.” But Shepard doesn’t move until Anderson calls for him. He reluctantly lets go of Kaidan’s hand. “I should go. Good to see you, Kaidan.”

“Good luck in there, Shepard.”

Shepard glances at him one more time before disappearing behind the heavy doors. Kaidan breathes deeply and braces himself for whatever questions Vega has.

“So the rumors are true, then.”

“Lieutenant, most rumors are either wildly overblown or flat out lies.”

“Well, yeah, but all rumors start somewhere. So… you and the commander…?”

Today is the first time they’re seeing each other since Shepard left him at the Citadel. He still feels bitter about being left behind, even if he now knows that Shepard was trying to protect him from the fallout over his role in the destruction of the Bahak System, but there’s no pretending how his heart shook at the sight, the thought that Shepard is _here_. There’s no pretending the look on Shepard’s face was just fondness for a former teammate.

_I missed you, Shepard. Do you have any idea?_

He mentally shakes himself out of his reverie. “Guess so.”

“So, this tribunal.... did it have anything to do with you helping him stop the Collectors?” Vega asks. “Must’ve been something, going to their base in the middle of the galaxy to blow it up. And a _human_ Reaper? Dios mío.”

“You could say that,” Kaidan says. 

“I, uh, heard how you got involved. But Cerberus? Really? You know who and what they are. What they did. Why did you stay?”

“It’s Shepard,” Kaidan says because there’s no other explanation. There never will be. “Wherever he goes, I go.”

And then the alarms sound.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **The ficmix can be found[here](http://8tracks.com/shirozora/a-thousand-eyes-staring-back).**
> 
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> When I started writing this fic, I kept laughing at myself coming up with an unoriginal premise... but the more I wrote, the more I wanted to see how Kaidan's involvement would change the plot. I'm sure there are places where I could've really pushed things but I'm pretty satisfied with what I came up with.
> 
> One change due to him being a part of the ME2 plot is that he doesn't become head of the Special Operations Biotics Division by the time the Reapers arrive. I can't even begin to imagine how devastating the Mars mission will be (and how much anger Kaidan's holding back over being left behind because of the Alpha relay assignment) or how much I'd have to rework the confrontation with Councilor Udina to ramp up the tension but I will probably not be exploring that. Or I will but at a much later date and time; I have a lot of Dragon Age to catch up on.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be updated on a weekly basis depending on how fast I am with the revisions.


End file.
